1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Red, White, and Blue, May 27, 2009
This review is from: State of the Union: Fifty Political Poems (Paperback)
This is a smart anthology somewhat underreviewed (at least on Amazon), though careful shoppers will want to check out other reviews outside this box. I wonder why it hasn't had much attention here, but it might have been that last fall--when the book was released--folks had other fish to fry, and I must have been in that cohort, since the book has sat in my Tpo Review pile for at least six months. I would take it up, crack it open, read an excellent poem, then put it aside, perhaps for another book where more fun was to be had. A young poet friend of mine extrapolated from this account of my interactions with "State of the Union"that I was afraid of its possible influence, for I too aspire to write political poems, and though I haven't had much success with them, subconsciously the glitter and polish of these poems, from Ashbery to Palmer and Howe, might be calling out to me, and my deluded mind will treat them as subaltern.
Well I suppose that's so. At first I wondered why editors Zapruder and Beckman chose only 50 political poems--doesn't seem like so many, does it? Maybe it corresponds to the number of states in the USA? If so it sort of works, but in no major way. It's a USA-centric book, perhaps on purpose, for during election years it always seems that we're the only country with any politics, whether for good or evil. The editors say only that they issued a call for poets to submit their "political work," and 1500 responses came in, sifted through by a staff, and presumably then they also asked individual poets for work as well, on the suggestion of other friends and colleagues. I wonder what percentage of the 50 poems here came via the "öpen call" and if, possibly, Ed Roberson's magnificent "The Open" reflects that call. It is possibly the best poem in the book and, significantly, one of the longest. That was my final answer, that the editors of STATE OF THE UNION limited it to fifty poems only because, on average, the poems were longer than those in your average anthology. Tate, Wier and Gizzi (Peter) sent in perfect lapidary little poems, but quite of few selections represent the most sustained poem I've ever seen by the poet in question.
In the end it comes down, I think, to that age old dilemma of a really excellent book saddled with a super-lame title. "State of the Union" indeed. Do you know, when you type in State of the Union at Amazon, and look under books, it list 110,021 entries? And that's just the books, I'm not counting other media such as the 1948 Frank Capra film with Tracy and Hepburn, a box office disappointment that would have done much better had it been called anything other than STATE OF THE UNION.
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