Poets in Need

America, for all its obvious flaws, has always treated the poet with a strange kind of reverence only occasionally glimpsed in the long history of humanity (the country they recently invaded being another obvious example). I have always found this somewhat curious, and as an antipodean, something to aspire to. One of the links on this blog is Big Bridge, an American site I highly recommend for its vigour and diversity in all things poetic. And it also has a link to a page entitled PIN (Poets in Need), where visitors can make donations for poets who have fallen on hard times (defined as misfortune through flood, fire, eviction, etc). I don't know how successful the program is, but to me the very concept is like a warm breath on a frozen ear. I hope I don't have to explain the metaphor. Will Howard's Australia reduce us to such measures? The polemic stops here.