Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

While I appreciated David Orr's clarifying essay, I have to disagree with his main observations, including the opening premise that the "idiotic business of democracy...rarely attracts the attention of our best poets." The ongoing work of Philip Levine and Adrienne Rich—certainly two of America's "best poets"—has examined and confronted issues of democracy and politics consistently for the last forty years. Furthermore, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, I believe some of the best poets have examined America's political and military situation in terms neither self-absorbed nor lacking in artistry. Some recent good books with social and political messages include Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music, Tony Hoagland's Hard Rain, and Iraq war veteran Brian Turner's Here, Bullet. Political poetry is not lacking in America. It is lacking in American literary magazines.