Monthly Archives: August 2021

Heather McGhee’s formulation in The Sum of Us[1] (SOU) is the most compelling I’ve seen for how Americans might transform the We the People of our nation’s Declaration from fantasy to reality, an inclusive reality, one wherein the nation’s several races enjoy equity of opportunity and are equally welcome, one wherein its We is truthful, not a code for We Whites. Put differently, within SOU, which I view as an overarching principle for constructing legislative policy at every governmental level…..

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I’ve said before that I am a special lover (or not) of a poem’s first line. A favorite of mine is this one from James Merrill’s The Mad Scene (p 206 of his Collected Poems; Knopf, New York, 2001). Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry. Now, true, the lines’s in iambs and these are in pentameter, but neither is critical for my loving it. I’m fond of lots of non-iambic, non-pentametered lines. I’ve even written an entire…..

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