The Creative Drive

“Thinking about literary influence, I wanted to write an ars poetica out of a day’s New York Times. I turned first to the Real Estate section, which would, I figured, be least poetic and therefore most challenging. It was a fortuitous mistake—there I found Ronda Kaysen’s thoughtful lament about the fate of trees in her New Jersey suburb; her article provided the raw material for this cento (with substitutions). I tip my hat to all of the Times reporters, to whom we are indebted for their excellent and very real reporting (along with environmentalist Mike Brick and forester John Linson, whose quotes also slip into the poem). I tip my hat to all trees, which, like poems, prove simultaneously fragile and resilient.”
—Catherine Barnett

Thanks to Tracy K. Smith, poet laureate of the United States and author of Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A with Smith about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year.