I wrote to a handful of friends, along with the members of our National Poetry Series board, and asked, simply, “Close your eyes, think of the first poem that comes to mind, and send me the title.”
So I’ve put together a little anthology of poems here—to thank my NPS board for their generous, ongoing support—by asking friends (writers, poets, journalists, booksellers, actors, chefs, lawyers, financiers, book collectors, restauranteurs, editors and the unemployed) to contribute a poem “on their minds.” I thought that would speak to the notion that poetry is always with us, and in keeping with the idea that it’s poetry keeping our language alive—safe from the corruption and shorthand of text, Twitter and email. The shortcuts, the truncated.
Thus this informal collection is called What Comes to Mind, to repay my board with the currency of language.
Gabrielle Hamilton, iconic chef of Prune in NYC, wrote, “Why the hell on earth did that poem [Amy Lowell’s ‘Patterns’] pop up as the first one that comes to mind??? Who knows? But that’s what happened over here!” And the novelist James McBride wrote, “‘The Builder’ by Will Allen Dromgoole, first recited to me by an old Black man named George Inky Wilson in Newark, Delaware 42 years ago. It was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received from anyone.” Do you think poetry matters?
These two responses must speak for most of the contributors here. Not necessarily their favorite poem, but the poem residing within them at a particular moment, the moment I pestered them with my “close your eyes and look for the poem.” Interestingly, the 100-plus contributors all offered up different poems—not a single duplicate! And the most selected poet was William Butler Yeats with five poems; Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens were a close second, with four poems each.
Close your eyes. Is there language in the darkness?
—Daniel Halpern
With contributions from André Aciman, Anthony Appiah, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Russell Banks*, James Berman*, Carl Bernstein, Jeffrey Brown, Jericho Brown, Bill Buford, Colin Channer, Sandra Cisneros, Bill Clegg, Billy Collins, Mariana Cook*, Michael Cunningham, Willem Dafoe, Don DeLillo, Beth Dial (former NPS Program Coordinator), Natalie Diaz*, Jim Dine, Cornelius Eady, Jennifer Egan, Deborah Eisenberg, Martín Espada, Andrew Foote*, Carolyn Forché, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Forrest Gander, Bonnie Garmus, Dwight Garner, Bruce Gibney, Elizabeth Gilbert, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Stephen Graham*, Lauren Groff, Daniel Halpern*, Lily Halpern, Gabrielle Hamilton, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Terrance Hayes, Tom Healy, Brenda Hillman, A. M. Homes, Cathy Park Hong*, Tyehimba Jess, Mitch Kaplan, William Kennedy, Lily King, Stephen King, William Kistler*, Alan Klein*, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nicole Krauss, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nick Laird, Padma Lakshmi, Kiese Laymon, Dennis Lehane, Téa Leoni, Jonathan Lethem, Ada Limón*, Steve Martin, James McBride, Elizabeth McCracken, Campbell McGrath, Danny Meyer, Stephen Mitchell, Ottessa Moshfegh, Carol Muske-Dukes, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Michael Ondaatje, Ann Patchett, Imani Perry*, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Adam Platt, Francine Prose*, David Remnick, Marilynne Robinson, Salman Rushdie, MaryAnn Salem (former NPS Treasurer), Susan Sarandon, George Saunders, Glenn Schaeffer*, Paul Schrader, Nicole Sealey, Vijay Seshadri, Dani Shapiro, Wallace Shawn, Gary Shteyngart, Charles Simic, Lea Simonds*, Paul Slovak*, Patti Smith, Tracy K. Smith*, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Amy Tan*, Salamishah Tillet, Colm Tóibín, Amor Towles, Natasha Trethewey*, Quincy Troupe, Lisa Trulaske*, Chase Twichell, Ocean Vuong, Pete Wells, Edmund White, Kevin Wilson, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Monica Youn, Kevin Young, and Nell Zink.
* Current or former NPS Board Member