Last night I finished off "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card, and then I was checking to see what else I could read because I didn't want to read further into a new biography of Heinz Guderian, theorist and practioner of modern amoured warfare. For some reason I picked up Studs Terkel's "American Dreams: Lost & Found" that was lying on top of a stack of paperbacks and began to read the introduction as the author begins to weave his magic of words into images of a past the held promise; and the present that seems to many people of a promise lost. The promise of an America that will be better for the children then the parents. The promise of a better and brighter future for all Americans not just the wealthy among us.

As I read the introduction, pausing frequently to think of the import of those words, I was struck by the cry for poets to give a better voice to the American language. Studs Terkel writes,
"In 1792, Paine observed: 'The mighty objects he beholds act upon the mind by enlarging it, and partakes of the greatness by contemplating it.' In 1972 the less fraudulent of our two presidential candidates, on winning the California primary, beamed over all three networks: 'I can't believe I won the whole thing.' Thus did an Alka-Seltzer commercial enrich our political vocabulary.
"Vox populi? Is that all there is to the American Dream, as celebrated in thousands of sixty second, thirty second, and ten second spots each day on all channels? A mercantile language, debased, and nothing else? Is the no other language, no other dream?"

Well, where do poets in America stand? What is the nature of poetry in America and can poets really come to influence the language of all Americans?

I, on occasion, read the blog by Ron Sillman, Sillman's Blog