[FAC] The Cultural Arts Fuel Creativity and Powers Innovation

[Cynthia Cooper]

Daily, and sometimes hourly, we are bombarded by the news crying fear, lack
and greed.  Around the water cooler, at the bar, in the boardrooms, we talk
about downsizing, layoffs and cutbacks.  Words, gossiped and whispered,
reporting the news, or spoken in a poem, have power and influence.  It is
easy to be swept away in panic and some of us live in realities the rest of
us would rather not know.  So now, more than ever, we need creativity and
innovation.  We need to have our words matter, to not throw them away or at
others thoughtlessly.

This poem has been sent by the American Life in Poetry, by the Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org).   Go to their website to sign up to
receive great poems like this in your inbox.

Cynthia Cooper
Executive Director
Fresno Coalition for Arts, Science & History
1401 Fulton Street, S-904, Fresno, CA 93721
559 286 8282 cell  
559 485 1100 office
ccooper at fcash.org email
http://www.fcash.org  web

Together we can do great things

American Life in Poetry: Column 185
 
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
 
When I was a boy, there were still a few veterans of the Spanish American
War, and more of The Great War, or World War I, and now all those have died
and those who served in World War II are passing from us, too. Robert Hedin,
a Minnesota poet, has written a fine poem about these people.
 
The Old Liberators
 
Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,
it's the old liberators I like best,
those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino
I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,
bored among the paints and power tools.
Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,
who keep dozing off in the little orchards
of shade under the distant skylights.
All around, from one bright rack to another,
their wives stride big as generals,
their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.
They are almost all gone now,
and with them they are taking the flak
and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.
Each day a little more of their memory goes out,
darkens the way a house darkens,
its rooms quietly filling with evening,
until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,
the wind bearing through the empty rooms
the rich far off scent of gardens
where just now, this morning,
light is falling on the wild philodendrons.
 
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1999 by Robert Hedin. Reprinted from
"The Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations," Holy Cow!
Press, 1999, by permission of Robert Hedin. Introduction copyright (c) 2008
by The Poetry Foundation.  The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as
United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
from 2004-2006.  We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
 
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a
free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission
of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to
create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for
reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication
here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
 

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