[FOsen]

This is one of my favorites of Gail's - she reads it well, too.


The Gypsy Woman Tells Your Fortune

You will make a juorney over water.
How large a body of water
I cannot say.

You will marry once for love
and once for money,
and whichever comes first,
you'll wish it had been the other.

You will eat too much salt.
Doctors will begin telling you
to slow down.

Something you never heard of
will kill your parents.
You will not be ready to take their place.

Your job will be less satisfactory
than you thought it would be.
So will your children.

Your car will break down
when you can least afford it.

When all else seems hopeless
you will meet a mysterious stranger.
it will be you.

[Susan McLean]

Gail is the best living American satirical poet I know, male or female. It is a mystery to me that she isn't as well known and well loved as Wendy Cope is in the UK. I attribute that failure of recognition not to her gender, though (for Sam Gwynn is also not widely known and also excellent in that field) but to America's general disdain for humorous verse. Someone like Billy Collins is allowed to be funny and wildly popular because he writes in free verse, the only acceptable form of contemporary poetry to the vast majority of Americans who care about poetry. We're never going to see another Ogden Nash or Dorothy Parker in terms of general appreciation until the prejudice against writing in form is broken and works like Gail White's are published in popular journals, the way Parker's and Nash's were.

Susan

[Janet Kenny]

I've been forcibly absent from my computer for four days or I would have already said that discovering Gail's poems was one of he greatest delights on this forum. I wish I had written the poems myself but since I didn't I'll have to endure the thought that some impostor called Gail White is writing them

Thank you so much Gail! Sanity and depth in one poet is an uncommon thing.
Janet

[Leslie Monsour]

To Susan McLean: Susan, you hit the nail smack on the head with

"Gail is the best living American satirical poet I know, male or female. It is a mystery to me that she isn't as well known and well loved as Wendy Cope is in the UK. I attribute that failure of recognition not to her gender, though (for Sam Gwynn is also not widely known and also excellent in that field) but to America's general disdain for humorous verse. Someone like Billy Collins is allowed to be funny and wildly popular because he writes in free verse, the only acceptable form of contemporary poetry to the vast majority of Americans who care about poetry."

I believe the same can be said of X.J. Kennedy, who had to publish his humorous verse in a separate volume, the recent PEEPING TOM'S CABIN. When humorous verse is formal, it is generally dismissed. Thank goodness we have LIGHT (even though they won't print the "f" word). I wonder what U.S. publishers would have done with Larkin's "This Be the Verse."

Now, on the subject of whether or not there is, as Tim Murphy says, a phenomenal eruption of terrific contemporary poetry by women, I'm beginning to think it has more to do with formal poetry than anything else. Just look at all the sonnets! I'll have to bring this up elsewhere. Meanwhile, Tim, it doesn't seem as though too many men (other than F. Osen and Quincy Lehr, who wanted to stay out of it) are finding your observation particularly approachable.

[Tim Murphy]

Gail might have a way to go before she overtakes Joe. One of the pleasures of this affair is re-reading all these poems by splendid poets. If I were editing an anthology today, and watch it, I might, it would be 52 percent women. When in human history would such a choice even have been considered by a man? I stand by my email: an astonishing efflorescence.

[Gail White]

I do appreciate all these kind remarks. But I think I know another reason why my Rich & Famous Contract has been held up in the mail-- I'm not a very prolific poet.
One of my writer friends used to say that "A page every day is a book every year". If I were even writing a poem every week, I could be bombarding the world with submissions! However, I'm one of those poets who have to wait till inspiration strikes, and sometimes it's a long time between jolts.

[Leslie Monsour]

That's me, too, Gail. Oh, yes, Tim, do your anthology! And, speaking of Gail White, here are two more poems which are typical of her work, and which I meant to include at the beginning of this thread. They are quite appropriate here:

POSTCARD TO MISS DICKINSON

I’m Somebody? Well, no—
Perhaps a half one, though,
While you’ve been somebody for years—
Perhaps you didn’t know?

How dreary to be Nobody!
How fetid, like the Bog
Where chortling frogs exult above
The stifled Pollywog!


A VISIT ON ALL SAINTS DAY

Hello. I’ve brought your favorite flowers again.
How is it going under there, my dead?
On this side, we’re no better off than when
you walked beside us. (Yes, I know I said
the same last year.) The human race is not
improvable. Ask any saint you meet.
We’ve gone to war again without a thought.
Our leaders shuffle bribes, our heroes cheat.
Your children haven’t turned out awfully well,
but who expected it? You’re not to blame,
and anyway I don’t believe in hell.
Goodbye for now. I’m always glad I came.
I make no promises about next year,
but one way or another, I’ll be here.

[Paul Lake]

Hey, Tim isn't the only man reading these poems. I've been dazzled reading old favorites and new ones on this thread, too, by poets I've admired for years. Since becoming a poetry editor, I've published some poems by several of the women poets on this thread (and have one I haven't yet contacted on my mental to-contact list).

[Leslie Monsour]

Hurray! Thanks for checking in, Paul.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Janet Kenny has it exactly right: "Sanity and depth" just about sums up Gail's work. What those words imply, of course, is the capacity to think opposites at the same time without flinching or forcibly shutting one eye, and the grace to admit that there may be no clean resolution, and the degree of detachment to live with that, and even laugh at such a predicament. I think Gail is a national treasure, and yes, far better than the more famous satirists of the '20s, of either sex.