{"id":7575,"date":"2022-01-14T07:40:54","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T15:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7575"},"modified":"2022-01-14T07:40:55","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T15:40:55","slug":"a-poem-takes-on-new-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/a-poem-takes-on-new-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem Takes on New Meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-7575\" data-postid=\"7575\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-7575 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I was perusing an anthology of American poetry when I encountered a poem, \u201cDegrees of Gray in Philipsburg,\u201d by my favorite American poet, Richard Hugo. I knew the poem well, and never tire of reading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I read it again and the poem exploded off the page into new meaning and relevance. It is a poem written almost a half century ago about the bitterness, intransigence and near death of a rural town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The poem was probably true back then, although I had no first hand adult knowledge of American small towns from that era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the second stanza, the first two lines read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The principal supporting business now is rage&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s because everything the small town used to know and do had gone away and the residents had to blame someone or some thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The principal supporting business now is rage&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rage about sums up a large part of cultural life in rural towns in America, a rage fanned by Fox News, Trump, hate radio, locally elected officials, and often the churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I would know because I lived in a typical rural town for four years not too long ago and rage was everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I read the poem again and wondered how such towns ever rid themselves of rage. I really have no idea. Have they always been that way? Is there a happy small town in the nation today?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was perusing an anthology of American poetry when I encountered a poem, \u201cDegrees of Gray in Philipsburg,\u201d by my favorite American poet, Richard Hugo. I knew the poem well, and never tire of reading it. I read it again and the poem exploded off the page into new meaning and relevance. It is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7578,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575\/revisions\/7578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}