Sherry Chandler

read these collections.

Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Unbound and Branded (Finishing Line, 2006)

James Baker Hall, The Total Light Process, (University Press of Kentucky, 2003)

Brian Turner, Here, Bullet (Alice James Books, 2005)

William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New Directions, 1948)

Joanie DiMartino, Licking the Spoon (Finishing Line, forthcoming)

I was tagged by Helen, who was tagged by Sam .

I tag Erin, Terry, and Shamash.

But also, I have a number of readers who are poets but not bloggers. It’d be nice if you all could make some recommendations in the comments.

Update: I’m going to have to add Anne Shelby’s Appalchian Studies (Wind, 2006) to my list. Anne read a few poems from this collection at the Carnegie Center last night and I found them just delightful.

In this decision, once again, the “justices” prove that they are what they were appointed to the Supreme Court to be: political hacks.

Otherwise, I’ll let the NYTimes speak for me on this one:

Denying the Right to Choose

Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure they might not fully understand in advance and would probably come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s place in the family and under the Constitution that have long been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.

I’ll give the last word on guns to Charlie Whitt, who has generously shared this poem with us:

The Dealer

Don’t compare this with Europe,
Or me with the poet who traveled abroad
To find ruin enough to write about.

On the highway to my town
There is time plenty to remember those
Who will not complete the journey.

The dealer leaning against the brick fence eyes us.
He doesn’t know if we are customers,
Or just two people caught by the light.

He doesn’t know if we are police,
He doesn’t care, he’s ready for anything,
And ready to leave his life in a bloody pool

On that cold sidewalk; ready to leave mine.
The light turns green, “the police know it”
We agree. “They are afraid, or bribed”

We agree. “They say we have to fix this ourselves”
What are we paying them for?
We agree, we don’t know.

We react, tell the broker, “this is a nice automatic,
It balances perfectly in my hand,
And those bullets,”
“Whatever they hit is dead,”
The broker cuts in.

I hate the waste thrust in our faces daily,
I hate knowing the dealer has made me his equal.

—Charles M. Whitt