As you may know from reading the papers and General Talk, Poetry Magazine has just been thrown an enormous chunk of change (Recap of NYT story follows.)

Your mission (applause to Sharon Passmore for suggesting it): write Ruth Lilly a thank you note in verse; or put the news of her bequest to some other poetic use.

On your marks!....

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Lilly Heir Makes $100 Million Bequest to Poetry Magazine

November 19, 2002
By STEPHEN KINZER

CHICAGO, Nov. 18 - An ailing heir who tried but failed to
have her poems published in a small literary journal has
given that journal an astonishing bequest that is likely to
be worth more than $100 million.

Ruth Lilly, 87, an heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical
fortune, submitted several poems to Poetry magazine in the
1970's and was rewarded only with handwritten rejection
notes from the editor, Joseph Parisi. Evidently she did not
take the rejections to heart. Mr. Parisi announced her gift
at the magazine's 90th-anniversary dinner on Friday.

Dearest Ms Lilly,

You're one hell of a dilly.

Grant's Gloom


It wasn’t easy
for Joe Parisi
to make ends meet
on Walton Street.
It took a mint
for him to print
rejection slips
that he would place
inside a SASE
so many times
along with rhymes
I’m sure that he’d
neglect to read.

He lived on tips
and was depressed.
Who would have guessed
that Prozac could
make Joe feel good
without a pill?
But thanks to Lil
and Prozac wealth,
financial health
is now at hand.

Whatever’s planned
for Prozac’s money,
it’s sort of funny
on reflection
to know it will
enable Joe
to speed rejection-
slips and so
more sad bards
will take it hard.

Not to be cynical,
but their moods may turn clinical,
and thus willy-nilly
they’ll profit Ruth Lilly.

On Ruth Lilly's Bequest to Poetry


Sing, Goddess, of the gift of loving death,
of last bequests, of passing on through breath
the syllables of life, eternal song.
May Mnemosyne sing of her name as long
as lines spill over pages. May the ink
now dried seem always fresh, and may we drink
a toast to shouts of "Lilly!" every night
we labor, each alone, to seek new light.

For she, infected with this painful urge
to turn dross to pure gold, that one must purge
in notes that far too often spill out wrong.
She knew the pain of failure at the song.
Yet glancing back across the many a page
of a life's reading, yielded not to rage
but love. (That we should be the half so kind!)
What she here sought, we pray, may she there find.