August 27, 2015: More Poems I Love: Espada’s “Perfection”

[A few years back, I shared a handful of my favorite American poems in a weeklong series. Before I go back to sharing poems for money—well, teaching them as part of my job, but you get the idea—I wanted to highlight another week’s worth of favorite poems and a couple reasons why I love each. Share your favorites in comments, please!]

Today favorite poem is Martín Espada’s “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” (1993).

I love “Perfection” because it lays bare (literally as well as figuratively) the hidden labor that constructs and sustains our society, especially at its highest and most seemingly rarefied levels. I love it because it’s not a political treatise about those realities but a visceral engagement with them, through the lens of a single speaker’s journey, identity, and evolving perspective on himself and his worlds. And I love it because I’ve heard Espada read it, and can say (as proudly as possible) that I share the same public university system with this immensely talented poet.

Last favorite tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this poem? Other favorites you’d share?

August 26, 2015: More Poems I Love: Dunbar’s “Mask”

[A few years back, I shared a handful of my favorite American poems in a weeklong series. Before I go back to sharing poems for money—well, teaching them as part of my job, but you get the idea—I wanted to highlight another week’s worth of favorite poems and a couple reasons why I love each. Share your favorites in comments, please!]

Today’s favorite poem is Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” (1896).

I love “Mask” because I don’t know of any other literary work that mirrors its author’s situation more closely (Dunbar was a hugely learned and talented poet forced by the market and publishers to write in a dialect voice much more often than he would have preferred) while at the same time speaking for a broad community of perspectives and experiences. I love it because if I had to pick only one literary text to portray the lynching epidemic, this would be the one. And I love it because of the raw, potent emotion of “O great Christ.”

Next favorite tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this poem? Other favorites you’d share?

August 25, 2015: More Poems I Love: Piatt’s “Pique”

[A few years back, I shared a handful of my favorite American poems in a weeklong series. Before I go back to sharing poems for money—well, teaching them as part of my job, but you get the idea—I wanted to highlight another week’s worth of favorite poems and a couple reasons why I love each. Share your favorites in comments, please!]

Today’s favorite poem is Sarah Piatt’s “A Pique at Parting” (1879).

I love “Pique” because it exemplifies Piatt’s dialogic style and perspective, her use of conversation (even when ostensibly within one speaker’s point of view, as is “Pique”) to build a sense of how our identities and voices exist in relationship to those of others. I love it because it challenges gender ideals and myths without becoming the slightest bit preachy or pedantic. And I love it because it’s as smart and funny as Piatt’s contemporary writer Fanny Fern, without losing a bit of the poetic complexity that made Piatt a worthy rival of her fellow contemporary Emily Dickinson.

Next favorite tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this poem? Other favorites you’d share?