Anne’s Diary (Page 39)

I was delighted to learn that Philip Levine will be our new poet laureate–not only because I love his poems, but because I actually got a chance to meet him when a literary group I worked for in San Antonio brought him to the city to speak. His poems are all "blue collar," with metaphors taken from his years working in the auto industry in Detroit. Despite their masculine overtones, I find them very appealing, because what they REALLY talk about is universal. For instance, here is one about connecting (or reconnecting) with a family member. Here’s an example:

What Work Is by Philip Levine

"We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. read more

I read "The Help" when it was first published a couple of years ago. For those who don’t know, the book is a pre-Civil Rights story about white southerners in the heart of the South and their black maids (one of whom exacts a wonderful revenge for her mistreatment).

After I finished the book, we took one of our frequent trips to San Antonio. I took the dust jacket along so I could show to my friends at the Reading Club I had belonged to there and urge them to read it, but when I arrived at the meeting, ready to make the recommendation, I found that everyone there was ALREADY eagerly reading it.
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There is rioting in the streets of London, and now it’s spread across the ocean to Philadelphia as well. The London (and Philadelphia) riots seem to be about "getting stuff" that advertising and the media have seduced these kids into thinking they have a right to own.
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I was in a doctor’s office recently, when I saw, among the various diplomas from medical schools of the physicians in the office, a framed citation from Vietnam, thanking the particular doctor I was there to see. It got me thinking back about that war, which was a major protest event in my youth, over 30 years ago. But those are all memories and that war is over: What troubles me now is that when the soldiers who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, they say the same exact thing that Vietnam Vets did: "We don’t know why we’re here."
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