Kay Ryan: Poetry and Money

Since April 15th fell on a Saturday, Tax Day was a little later this year, Monday the 16th. In honor of the almighty dollar, here is former US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, re-writing Wallace Stevens' "Money is a Kind of Poetry" quote...


Poetry is a Kind of Money

Poetry is a kind of money
whose value depends upon reserves.
It's not the paper it's written on
or its self-announced denomination,
but the bullion, sweated from the earth
and hidden, which preserves its worth.
Nobody knows how this works,
and how can it? Why does something
stacked in some secret bank or cabinet,
some miser's trove, far back, lambent,
and gloated over by its golem, make us
so solemnly convinced of the transaction
when Mandelstam says gold, even
in translation?

from The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press, 2010)