American Life in Poetry: Column 166

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Texas poet R. S. Gwynn is a master of the light touch. Here he picks up on Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet "Pied Beauty," which many of you will remember from school, and offers us a picnic instead of a sermon. I hope you enjoy the feast!

Fried Beauty

Glory be to God for breaded things—
  Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,
      Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim
With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,
   Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,
        That in all oils, corn or canola, swim

Toward mastication's maw (O molared mouth!);
   Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry
         On paper towels' sleek translucent scrim,
These greasy, battered bounties of the South:
                   Eat them.

Professor Folbre is keeping a weblog on care provision. Awesome. She was my introduction to non-Lynda political economy -- and the death of my contempt for feminist economic theory.

Susan Stinson reminded me this morning of one of Nancy's big questions: "What is the economy for?" -- and how her underlying assumptions clash with my friend John Perich's reminder: "The economy is a thermometer, not a thermostat". Struggling to define common terms between theories is half the conversation and the arena for the ideas.

Nancy Folbre on care as service and/or Service in When a Commodity Is Not Exactly a Commodity; by word association football, Val Morgan on commodity and priority in King John.

Favorite thing today:

Florian Böhm's photos of people in New York City waiting to cross the street.