The Six-Day Poetry Crisis

The Event is so rare in the scheme of Things, it has no name peculiar to itself. Bureaucracies, so eager to gobble up revenue for any excuse, failed to detect this one. No church or museum or university anticipated it. No news organization got the scoop. Their representatives stare at each other in follow-up sessions, and then they all talk at once. It's that kind of situation. When a nervous silence ensues, a dishelved offical says, "How could we possibly know dribble-dabblers, these scribblers without any media clout, these poets in an Age of Prose and Sense would count so highly? Could it be a hoax? Of course." The alarm had been sounded the year before when a joint commission of NASA scientists and Mayo Clinic researchers announced their findings: "Just as the brain releases chemicals which flood the individual's conscious- ness with positive feelings, so the interior work of poets releases psychic energy beneficial to humanity and nature." The spokesperson almost almst choked, he wiped his brow: "We are as surprised as you with our, um, unanimous conclusions... But, there's more. Our calculations indicate a short-fall of some, ah, forty-five poets to adequately produce these benefits."TV coverage showed some of the specialists laughing, but by Day Three of the crisis, no one was laughing. The United States government Impact Paper was leaked to the confused public. The San Andreas Fault had widened, Blue Whales suddenly were singing their symphony in minor key, Monarch butterflies could not find Mexico. They were trapped, circlig malls in central Texas, traffic was stalled for miles, even in small towns, a greasy rain stained people and buildings across New England, in southern Minnesota the mighty Mississippi River was turned into stationary sludge. And Good Will among people around the globe degenerated into scorn and threats. People's faces either showed alarm or absolutely nothing at all. On the Fourth Day, Robert Bly came out of his retirement, and at age 90 began a marathon reading of poems. People crowded into the Landmark Center in St. Paul for the relief which flowed forth from his mighty presence as he read his own poems and his translations of what he called "News of the Universe." The listeners sighed in delight at the words of Neruda and Lorca, Rilke and Ahkmatova, Transtromer and Levertov permeated the air they breathed. When Robert Bly read "The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, " they felt a huge weight lift from their spirits. He read it a second time and the weight dissolved into the grace of being. In later days, people said Robert Bly's reading was the Battle of Thermopylae in this crisis. When he left the stage on the Fifth Day, two hundred poets and readers of poetry formed a line of volunteers to continue the work he began. On the Seventh Day, the Mississippi River flowed slowly and majestically below its high banks in the Twin Cities area. Cool, clear rain cleansed New Enfland, traffic raced the highways once again, and the Monarchs reached their and began their annual reign. Pundits began to dissect the crisis into many unrelated events, and the laughter over poetry in an age of prose resumed... But in a small town anywhere or everwhere in the world, a twelve-year old girl completed to her satisfaction her first ever poem. The opening line read, "We are beginning to read the message each dawn delivers to our waking minds: Keep your promises, people of the sweet Earth."