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Of the poetry collections I own, none is more notated, dog-eared and revisited than the faded-blue book edited by Garrison Keillor called: Good Poems. Indeed, it was one of the first collections of poems I ever purchased. So, I was recently chastened, challenged, and properly gob-smacked upon hearing Jericho Brown’s lecture at AWP from 2017 (You can find it here). In it, he reads a searing letter penned by Rita Dove that questions the paltry number of African-American poets represented in Keillor’s collection of 294 poems (3, and all of them dead, and one of them a blues singer, with not a single Hispanic or Native American poet to be found). This collection doesn’t even meet the (slightly) more diverse representation of poets in Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac radio series (canceled a couple of years ago and recently revived as a podcast).

Perhaps Rita Dove’s response to the Good Poems collection–or the larger cultural shift that is creating space for marginalized voices– has brought changes to The Writer’s Almanac. If this recent April 4, 2019 episode is an indication, there is some expansion happening in that podcast in the decade or more since the release of Keillor’s first collection of Good Poems (there are subsequent collections: Good Poems for Hard Times, and Good Poems: American Places).

I listen to The Writer’s Almanac every day, but, thanks to collections by Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Ruben Quesada, Ross Gay, Jose Olivarez, Kaveh Akbar, Natasha Oladokun, and Naomi Shihab Nye, I’m being refreshed by poets who represent the wider landscape of human experience. Tracy K. Smith’s daily podcast, The Slowdown, is another daily listen for me, and it offers a welcome balance of perspectives from voices both familiar and unfamiliar (to me). See also these other podcasts below.**

Hearing daily from Tracy K. Smith is opening windows in me and letting in some much-needed fresh air. I have blind spots in my exploration of poets, especially poets who explore their own history with Christian faith. But is “blind spot” even the right metaphor to use here? How big can a blind spot be? How does it expand to become veritable blindness? I have my antenna out, always hoping to discover writers who wrestle with faith, who wrestle against faith, or wrestle in faith, or toward faith, and yet I have passed swiftly by the buried treasures of those unapologetic artists and wrestlers of color in favor of more familiar voices that speak what my itching ears want to hear.

What draws us to certain artists or works of art beyond the search for what feels familiar? To be honest, I’m too familiar with the disappointment that comes when I don’t find what I am looking for in a poem or a story. When I don’t find what “rings true” for me. But what informs this “truth ringing?” My predispositions. My preferences. My experience. My maleness. my whiteness. My curiosity (or lack of it). Poems that are designed to comfort people like me. My propensity to avoid challenge. My aversion to intellectual and spiritual hazards: past hurts, fears, shame, mirrors, whatever shines a light on my flaws, whatever seems smarter than me. Or I might succumb to plain old laziness: an uncomplicated avoidance of effort. Especially for me, a Christian, there are large temple-like pillars I tend to navigate around: portrayals of evil, ugliness, poems that evoke fear, rage, sexual expression, or provocative poems that carry messages I find unpalatable or that celebrate non-Christian religious perspectives. The immediate, unthinking, gut-level response to what passes into my field of vision too often informs what I open my mind and spirit to.

What are “good poems” beyond my own familiar, immediate family of poets? What unfamiliar spaces and voices might reveal what it is that I say I’m looking for? The time I’ve spent in Keillor’s Good Poems collection, while far from being time lost, is also a habit, a revisiting of all that I find familiar and comfortable. Perhaps Keillor’s blue book of “good poems” has been a training ground of sorts for me. A launching pad. Or maybe it’s a like a house I grew up in. A house in need of a new kitchen. Or maybe it’s one of many boats I’ve traveled in. Or perhaps it’s like a familiar island in an archipelago where I can set anchor, disembark, and explore other islands in a wider, bluer landscape.

* Kaveh Akbar image from The Paris Review

Rita Dove image by John Sokol

Tracy K. Smith image by Devin Symons

Jericho Brown image

** Poetry Off the Shelf, and DUAL Poetry Podcast, The Poetry Gods