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BOOKS I READ: Crossing State Lines: An American Renga edited by Bob Holman and Carol Muske-Dukes (2011). This project gathered fifty-four poets for a conversation about America, an effort to counter the growing division in America circa 2009. The renga, a nine-hundred-year-old Japanese linked poem form, was chosen to foster this conversation, and hopefully become “a meditative journey through our turbulent times.”
In 2009, the turbulent times meant the recent election of Barack Obama, the foreclosures, and the growing political divide. The editors hoped the conversation among these poets might shine a light on our commonality and shared interests. Reading this in 2024, one wishes for that more gentle time.
An obvious critique of the project is that only a few of the contributors responded to the poem that proceeded theirs, choosing to their own path, rather than following the spirit of the renga. Perhaps that’s more American.
The book includes a couple of introductory essays by the editors before the poem is kicked off by Robert Pinsky:
Beginning of October, maples
kindle in the East, linked
to fire season in the West by what?Three time zones, oceans of prairies, Rocky
precincts. Air, turbulence, icemelt. Ozone ranges.
Robert Hass closes the poem. In between, my favorite two poems were by Jennifer Benka and David Banks.
Each poet (or surrogate) read his or her lines for the film shot soon after the release of the book.
Check out my full reading-log. The previous book in the log:
