New US Poetry Stamps

America honors 10 of her poets

I went to the Boulder Creek post office this afternoon to pay bills and get my mail. Discovered that the US government is honoring poets by putting their faces on postage stamps and publishing a few lines of their verse on the back of the peel-off sheet. This cultural gesture inspired me to nominate my own faces and verses for possible inclusion on a future edition of US Poetry stamps.

Allen Ginsberg

 I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving, hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix.
----from HOWL

Ezra Pound

 And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
                                          And life slips by like a field mouse
                                          Not shaking the grass

Amiri Baraka

Somebody blew up America
They say its some terrorist, some barbaric A Rab
Who do the saying Who is them paying
Who tell the lies Who in disguise
Who own the buildings Who own the papers
---from SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA

Nick Herbert

I want to woo Her not view Her
Pet Reality until She purrs
---from JABIR'S FORMULA

Marge Piercy

 The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real
----from TO BE OF USE

Robinson Jeffers

  Under men's hands and their minds
The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city;
It was only a moment's accident, the race that plagued us;
The world resumes the old lonely immortal Splendor

----from THE BROKEN BALANCE

 Support the practice of poetry in the USA. Please use these new stamps freely on your blogs, in your eMail, your peer-to-peer file exchanges and in your electronic funds transfers.