"Students," Carl Dennis

A middle aged man inspects the painting
That seems to present a boy with a bird and a whale.
Though his children, perhaps, have refused his counsel,
Though his wife has a lover who borrows money,
And his job at the savings-and-loan isn't inspiring,
He lays no blame on his country's decline,
Or his mother's coldness, or the slope of his chin,
But humbly supposes his ignorance does him in.
So he looks hard at the painted scene.
Maybe the boy with the bird and the whale
Would tell him something useful about the soul
If only he hadn't neglected his studies.
He needs a teacher, he thinks, to help him see,
And looking around the room discovers me
Looking at him with my sympathetic stare.
If he comes this way, I'll have to tell him the truth
About the shortage of teachers everywhere.

from New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004.

Read an interview Dennis gave after winning the Pulitzer for his collection Practical Gods, then check out Night Skye for the proper line breaks in "The God Who Loves You," the poem he reads for his interviewer. Two years ago, a blog called Existential Moo typed in his poem "Sunrise," while Ploughshares offers "Writing at Night" and "Distinctions." AGNI, a publication supported by Boston University's Creative Writing Program, has "Infidel." And then Dennis himself grapples with the question, "What's American About American Poetry?"