I am sorry, I didn’t mean to impugn anyone’s taste in poetry. However…

“Nothing more than that, but certainly that, which, after all, ain’t

nothing. Parse the poem? Claim that it makes the Muse weep? To paraphrase

your denunciation of the overreaction to Martha Stewart’s misdeeds, As well

break a butterfly on the wheel.”

This dude has been appointed (elected? selected? acclaimed? I have no

clue about the process) POET LAUREATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. If

that means anything, it should mean that he is, among all 290,000,000 of us,

one of the half-dozen or so best poets. His work should therefore be of an

extremely high standard.

Not “nothing more than that.” Not “ain’t nothing.” Not “butterflies.”

Kooser’s stuff should soar and swoop, peal and toll, make the bristles stand

up on your chin. (And whatever the female equivalent is.) The specimen

presented does not do any of those things. It just lies on the ground,

inert and silent.

If this is the best that 290,000,000 Americans can do to keep alive the

tradition of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Longfellow, Tennyson, and

Kipling, then we are doomed, doomed.

This guy should be the BEST, the top, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas.

My impression so far is that he is, in point of fact, a few ticks below

mediocre.

(And to people who’ve written in to tell me that I myself make grammatical

blunders: Sure, of course I do. But I ain’t POET LAUREATE OF THE UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA, see? Unless somebody’s keeping it as a surprise, I’m not

even in the running. “I may criticize a carpenter who makes me a bad table,

though I could not make a table myself. It is not my business to make

tables.”)