Richard Michelson
The Business of America If the cost of the poem composed in the book-lined study is equal to one half the hypotenuse of the poem memorized in the jail cell of the mind, what is the value of silence? my son asks, mocking me, as another evening dawns in this storied downtown of Northampton, Massachusetts, where from my window I can see the glass door that opened into the office of Silent Cal Coolidge whose six memorable pre-depression words: the business of America is business —still quoted in the cultural literacy lexicon of the world— has a hundred million more hits than Frost’s famous five: good fences make good neighbors. Poetry is found everywhere in my neighborhood where the business of poetry is poetry. I’m not thinking of Emily’s Silence is Infinity, three words first whispered by that white devil Calvinist God named Punctuation. O, American Poetry,
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what soul wouldn’t I sell to purchase a timeshare in the condominium of your college syllabi, the neighbors’ yawps notwithstanding. It’s so noisy in there I can’t hear the quiet of my country’s cash register not ringing, not even in this bargain basement of bad ideas, this prison where the poetry of America is business.
MOUNT HOPE