Crossing State Lines: An American Renga
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A collaborative poem about America, from fifty-four of our best poets Crossing State Lines: An American Renga is a poetic relay race across the continent: fifty-four poets responding to ideas of America—and to each other. This is a collaborative journey of impressions—from the election and inauguration of President Obama, through foreclosures, job losses, chords of country music, and bombs in Baghdad, to a poet-soldier's rifle-sight in Afghanistan. The renga itself, in the ancient tradition of Japanese linked verse, provides the form of this historic conversation among the poets, as they meditate, within ten lines, on a moment in America. Crossing State Lines begins with Robert Pinsky's recounting of a line of poetry by Lincoln as fall deepens and "maples / kindle in the East," and ends some five hundred lines later, with Robert Hass's "greeny April" on the Pacific coast. All proceeds from sales go to America: Now and Here.
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I've just read an amazing book.
(Good. I see you streaming in. Lots of you. You want to know what I've readingthat is so amazing, right?)
It's a book of poetry.
(Well, that did it. Cleared the room with one word.)
Wait. Stop. Give me one more minute of your time.
(Thank you for stopping, even if you are standing at the open door.)
The book is called Crossing State Lines: An American Renga.
A renga is an old Japanese poetic form.
You know haiku?
A renga is similar to a haiku,
only it is done collaboratively.
(Are you still there? One more minute.)
This book is a collaborative effort of fifty-four of
America's greatest living poets.
Everybody is here...Robert Pinsky...Billy Collins...
Adrienne Rich...Edward Hirsch...David Lehman...Rita Dove...
(If you've waited this long, let me reward you with a taste.)
“We're not them,”the man at VerizonHelp Desk says.“Okay,” I say, “who is ‘them'?”“There is no ‘them,'” he says.Epiphany. A signoutside Prince Realty:Need Help? Inquire Within.All the dry stiff Christmas treestip to trunk along the curb.
(So what do you think? she asks, a little too eagerly.Like it? If you are rubbing your head in confusion,read it one more time.Remember: Poetry isn't a McDonald's hamburger.If you liked this little part,just imagine a whole book of it.And all of it linked together.And written by some brilliant poets.If you've left the roomor if you've stayed, but you are still rubbing your head,that's okay, too.Just promise me you'll try a bite or two of poetryon another day. Think of poetry like snails.You've got to take it in small nibbles.And you ain't gonna hear anyone say it tastes like chicken.Stop thinking that you are eating snails;just enjoy the incredible taste.)
Thank you to publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing this advanced reader copy with me.
