Could This Really Happen? And A Poem

Today, a look back at Tony Hoagland's wishful and wonderful Harper's Magazine essay Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America. I go back to this when I want to remember  and reaffirm that no matter the language of the day, we are not just consumers and not just taxpayers.

What would your list of twenty poems include?

Today mine would surely include Muriel Rukeyser's "Islands," bitter and optimistic, hopeless and hopeful, with the glittering surface that attracts and obscures right at the center.

Islands

O for God's sake
they are connected
underneath

They look at each other
across the glittering sea
Some keep a low profile

some are cliffs
The bathers think
islands are separate like them