Poem of the Month

Poet Book: Learning to Accept the Unacceptable

I was just reading a book about poets
from John Donne to Julia Alvarez
and it was about the kind of poetry they wrote
and speculation about why they wrote it
as though it were a shortcoming
since they never wrote novels
about whale obsessions or windmill tilts.

One hundred poets
were in the book
from Ai to Ezra
with e. e. in caps
and Ginsberg next to Kerouac,
but Billy Collins and Ted Koozer
nowhere in sight.

The book is riddled
with successful suicides,
lamented sexual orientations,
premature deaths and ejaculations,
presentiments,
psychoanalyzed doodles,
and diminished expectations.

Where are similar books
on plumbers,
plowmen, bookkeepers,
draftsmen and receptionists?

Did they predict their careers
by the papers they produced
in third grade,
in the drawings on the margins
of high school textbooks,
and in letters to
teenage friends and lovers?

I knew a plumber once
whose philosophy was
that we must learn
to accept the unacceptable.
He should have been
included in the poets book.