{"id":11183,"date":"2013-04-03T09:40:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T13:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=11183"},"modified":"2013-04-03T09:40:47","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T13:40:47","slug":"a-poem-should","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=11183","title":{"rendered":"a poem should"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A poem should compel respect and pity<br \/>\nAs a siren stops the city,<\/p>\n<p>Cry<br \/>\nTo see the stricken hobble by.<\/p>\n<p>A poem should mutely display<br \/>\nWhat would hush a room to say:<br \/>\nA handful of dust, a rapist swan,<br \/>\nBodies scythed into ditches of clay.<\/p>\n<p>A poem should see<br \/>\nWhat the fry-cook sees, the whale,<br \/>\nThe refugee.<\/p>\n<p>It should lay its wrinkled fingers<br \/>\nGently on and squeeze.<\/p>\n<p>It should release in the back of the nose<br \/>\nScents of salt water, sex, new rain on soot,<br \/>\nGrandfather\u2019s undiscarded clothes.<\/p>\n<p>A poem is built from parts<br \/>\nAnd then left on the curb.<br \/>\nYou take a piece home, plug it in.<br \/>\nIt restarts.<\/p>\n<p>A poem\u2019s every line<br \/>\nCan split and recombine,<br \/>\nLie unexpressed until it arrests<br \/>\nAn ethical decline.<\/p>\n<p>A poem is equal to:<br \/>\nMe plus you.<\/p>\n<p><em>(With apologies to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poetrymagazine\/poem\/6371\">Archibald MacLeish<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A poem should compel respect and pity As a siren stops the city, Cry To see the stricken hobble by. A poem should mutely display What would hush a room to say: A handful of dust, a rapist swan, Bodies scythed into ditches of clay. A poem should see What the fry-cook sees, the whale, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11183"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11216,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183\/revisions\/11216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}