[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

We have a long weekend ahead with Martin Luther King Day on Monday. You may think, given the holiday, it would be greedy to call for a POETS Day. That’s what they want you to think.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. You aren’t getting any work done on Friday afternoon before a regular weekend, much less a long one. The boss is probably halfway to his dacha as you read this. Get out, enjoy the sunshine, hit the bar, and claim the time that’s rightfully yours.

First, a little verse.

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My favorite librarian recommended a moderate stack of books when I asked for essays attempting (essaying!) to define American poetry. As best I can explain, we’re known for our rebels. Pound wanted to make it new, Eliot stopped and restarted the world, Whitman sang to his own meter, Dickinson’s literary mentor loved her work but wasn’t sure it was even poetry. Robert Frost plays down-home, and Pound introduced him in a letter to Alice Corbin Henderson as “VURRY Amur’k’n,” but Frost was a wicked practitioner of conversational rhythms in a way that set him apart. William Carlos Williams made it his mission to set an American course, but he’s as unique as the rest of ’em.

Strip away all the innovation. What’s the commonality we find in American verse that distinguishes it from European? Is there anything? My hunt may be an exercise in eye strain. Possibly Quixotic, but I enjoy the looking.