The New York Stock Exchange began when stockbrokers met under a buttonwood tree in 1792, the year that Blake wrote “Song of Liberty,” the year Shelley was born. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, representing the dollar average of 12 stocks from leading American industries, was created by Charles Dow on May 26 1896, six days after the U.S. Supreme Court introduced the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Now corporations have the same rights as people. Why can’t poems? I nominate Robert Duncan’s “Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar” for president, Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You” for chairman of the Senate’s foreign relations committee.

Brenda Hillman instructs us, “Shelley wants you to visit Congress when he writes/a violet in the crucible & when he notes/ imagination is enlarged by a sympathy.”

C.D. Wright explains, “The popular perception is that art is apart. I insist it is part of.”

Blake reminds us, “For everything that lives is Holy!”

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