I met Susan Briante at a poetry reading recently. It was her reading, from her book of poems The Market Wonders, in particular. I had a sense that I could learn quite a bit from talking with her.
A poetry book about The Dow, and market values, and human values? How could I resist reading and reviewing it?
In the first poem, “Toward The Poetics of the Dow,” Briante notes that “I wish more poets would write about money.” I agree. It seems fair to respond also that more finance people should write about poetry.
My own comfort with commenting on poetry fades fast, when we move above the A.A. Milne level. Milne specifically differentiates himself in the introduction to his first book of poetry from Wordsworth, by declining to explain the background to his poetry and what he was thinking about and where he was as he wrote certain lines. Briante, on the other hand, does include helpful notes and references in the back of her book. This proves useful for people like me, who will otherwise miss the reference.
In the notes, she explains her project of recording the daily closing level of the Dow throughout 2009. From there, armed with a number (more or less arbitrary) she sought inspiration from disparate sources online and offline. Twenty-five of the poems in this book take their title from the format of “Date, Closing Level and direction of the Dow.”
The first three like that are, in order, “October 1-The Dow Closes Down 9509,” “October 6-The Dow Closes Up 9731,” and “October 14-The Dow Closes Up 10015”. You get the idea. There are twenty-five of these.
Briante writes:
“Poems should evidence some degree of control, but poets should be a little volatile. The poem is a high-risk investment, a long-term commitment. Like a big dirty city, it should make you feel a little uncomfortable.”
Briante writes of Buddhist meditation. Drone attacks from above, police batons from the side. The heat of Texas and Arizona. Pregnancy, miscarriage, and then her daughter’s tiny form, breast-feeding. The Market as a shambling, nostalgic grandfather. Numbers in the titles, mini-poems along the bottom page like a running ticker.
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