Dear Editor,

Peter Campion's review of Stephen Dunn's latest book ("Ten Takes," November, 2004) has left me dumbstruck. Did Campion read the book? Does he know Dunn's oeuvre, or was he just trying to define himself against Dunn's reputation by taking cheap and unconsidered potshots? I was baffled by comments such as "morally vacuous platitude," "rhetorical inflation," and "we're never allowed to see the mind in action." Did Campion read the villanelle, "Grudges," which is an example of Dunn's blending the personal and political in finely rendered form? Or the title poem, which is a deeply political and philosophical observation in response to 9/11? Frankly, this collection may be Dunn's most overtly political, yet Campion suggests that it is one-dimensional and excessively personal, ending his equivocations and pronouncements with a strange analogy about a bed and breakfast that could only have been meant to offend. Dunn's readers aren't asked to lie in a Laura Ashley coverlet and sip Celestial Seasonings tea. He asks us to do the most terrifying thing in the world: look at the self head-on, stripped bare, without subterfuge, but with grace. The Insistence of Beauty is about what can be found in the crevasses of our lives—of which there are many—and our ability to look into them without sentimentality and discern among the shards something salvageable, something that demands rescuing—or what will prevail if we do not.

Laura McCullough
Galloway, New Jersey



Dear Editor,

Joseph Epstein's comments ("Thank You, No," September, 2004) suggesting that introducing poetry to a wider audience might "vulgarize" it, and that teaching poetry in high schools and elementary schools "is probably a mistake" baffle me. In the first place, it's fun to imagine him discussing any form or meaning of the word "vulgar" with any of the writers of Sherod Santos's magnificent translations from Latin and Greek that have appeared in Poetry recently. What would it mean to "vulgarize" their poetry? Has he forgotten that the essential appeal of even the most formally accomplished poetry is still the ancient one: the primal power of the human voice? Does he think the passion of consciousness is a professional skill, available only to the highly trained, or only the most refined sensibilities? He says poetry is an acquired taste, like caviar. How about like martinis or jalapeños or dark chocolate? And why is there shame for a poet in seeking a larger audience? In wanting to make a living from her work? Can a cobbler eat shoes? A bowl of your barley beer for an excellent poem is a very ancient transaction. Something extra to pay my landlord is a more modern necessity, but follows in an ancient and honorable tradition nonetheless. And what's his beef with prizes? Hasn't the support of patrons always been important to artistic endeavor? Can't we just be glad it's nonprofit foundations now, rather than kings and princes?

I'm with Yusef Komunyakaa (Letters, November, 2004) on the importance of putting poetry back into our schools. Our obligation, like any animal's, is to raise our young to survive in the world, and for human animals that means more than acquiring the skills to secure food and shelter. It means, as Komunyakaa says, "embrac[ing] life over death and destruction." It means opening young minds to unimagined possibilities, teaching the power of words to create, to conjure, tell difficult truths, to lie, to delight. In the results of the annual poetry contest at my own children's public elementary school, I've seen the enormous capacity of children to enjoy language and to recognize the possibility of extraordinary disclosure in patterned speech. Some of the poems are astonishing, but the really important thing is for all of our children to learn to expect entrance into poetry, to see it as territory open to them. Some will find a lifelong pleasure/provocation there; some won't. Far fewer will if poetry is presented to them as a kind of test, a world open only to special initiates, or never presented to them at all.

Julie Holcomb
Emeryville, California



Dear Editor,

I'm confused. Is Dana Gioia the head of the NEA or Undersecretary of Defense for the Arts? [See "Poetry and the Pentagon: Unholy Alliance?" October, 2004] Since he took the helm, there have been two major initiatives there, and both have involved art for the military. The first is a program to produce Shakespeare plays in small communities, which includes a million-dollar program to bring Shakespeare to military bases. And now we have writing workshops for soldiers returning from Iraq. This marriage of art and military is a terrifying indication of where things are going in this country. If the point of the program is psychotherapy, the Defense Department is the most over-funded institution on the planet, so let them run it. If the point is art, why is it that the only NEA-sponsored training program for artists is devoted to soldiers?

If the NEA wants to get into the business of developing writers among under-represented population groups, why not start with poor kids who are facing no better future than to join the military and kill other poor kids in distant lands? How about Native Americans, remnants of America's local genocide? Or how about the Iraqis who have seen their families blown away by America's writer-to-be warriors?

David Hinton
East Calais, Vermont