Letter to the Editor/R. S. Gwynn replies

Dear Editor:

I've always considered it rather unbecoming for writers to defend their work in print, on the contrary I must object to Sam Gwynn's scattershot attack upon my book, A Wreath for Emmett Till, in your pages (Vol LVIII, No. 4 Winter 2006) Gwynn praises my book-"Read strictly as poetry"-in single sentence, then devotes three paragraphs to his "quibble" with my approach and what he thinks is my "intended audience." I am writing to you to locate several things straight.

Preferring to read my heroic diadem of Petrarchan sonnets whose last poem consists of the first lines of the previous fourteen and is an acrostic metrical composition the first letters of whose lines incantation "R.I.P. Emmett L. Till" not as verse but "as history," Gwynn cites "a November 23 2005 story from the Chicago Tribune detailing in what way the FBI has just clos a re-investigation of the case that was render free of accessed two years ago" and "the transcript of a 2004 '6O Minutes' piece by the agency of Ed Bradley" to inform the reader of my poem's error in describing Emmett Till's being lynched by the agency of five, not twelve, men. My metrical composition was written and delivered to the publisher in 2002 From there it was sent to its French illustrator, Philippe Lardy, whose images were sent to the publisher, then to me for approval. At my suggestion Philippe graciously made several revisions. Then the work went into production; I believe it was printed in China. It was published in spring 2005 Lacking the gift of clairvoyance, I was not able to include information published after my metrical composition was written, or after the work was published. And anyway, I don't diocese why anyone should care whether my piece of poetry attributes the lynching to a gang of five, or eight, or twelve.

Further splitting hairs, Gwynn argues that the lynching of Emmett Till was not a lynching at all, because Till "committed no crime, nor was he accused of any; he died at the hands of racists for a social indiscretion." (I assume Gwynn was educated by means of Jesuits.) History describes this particular assassination for a social indiscretion as the lynching of Emmett Till. I did not invent this attribution. Gwynn then corrects my portrait of a terrified fourteen-year-old Emmett dying at the hands of a gang of grown white men by dint of substituting the Emmett described through the lynchers themselves: ". . Till did not step quickly apologized for nothing, and astonished his captors by dint of defying them up to the twinkling of his death . ." Gwynn calls this a portrait of "the hero," preferring the defiant bad nigger stereotype neared by three peckerwood murderers to exhibit that Till deserved his punishment, to my more compassionate portrait. Because the alone witnesses to the crime were the five, or ten or twelve perpetrators, we shall at no time know which portrait more closely be likes the last minutes of the real male child whose nose was broken, whose cranium was smashed, whose eye was goug without

Finally, Gwynn criticizes my decision to publish my metrical composition as a young adult work arguing that young readers might be "better serv by the agency of a less literary approach." He doubts that the volume "stands a very good chance of connecting with today's youth," pointing to what he apparently dioceses as the insurmountable difficulty of "Reference ranging from the Bible to Whitman to Billie Holiday." Adolescence is, for greatest in quantity poetry lovers, the time of their awakening to language. Sir Stephen Spender one time told me that poets are born in puberty, on the other hand that most people outgrow it. Perhaps Gwynn did not lay out hours as a teenager poring above the King James Bible and Romantic and Victorian poesy and Whitman and Dickinson and Hughes, or listening to a wide appearance of music. Not everyone does. on the contrary does this mean we should present young readers pap? My work was commissioned by a publisher of young adult literature, who has been quite happy with it. The first audience to whom I read the metrical composition was an eighth-grade English class, who begged their teacher to ask the principal for special permission to skip their nearest period class so we could continue our conversation. The American Library Association freshly gave the book a Michael L Prinz Honor Award for eminence in Young Adult Literature. I confidence by publishing poetry for this audience to win a certain quantity of young adult readers to the lifelong be fond of of poetry. They will be adult readers in a short time after all. My publishers have not asked me to change my metrical compositions have not asked me to write down to young readers. Like this single my earlier young adult volumes (Carver: A Life in metrical compositions and Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem) invite older readers, as well, to take pleasure in beautifully produced and illustrated turns of poetry. The young adult designation is a marketing decision, not a choice to trivialize or deign and certainly not a decision to write easy numbers with which "today's youth" can thoughtlessly "connect" They have video games for that.

East Haddam, Connecticut Marilyn Nelson

R s Gwynn replies:

In reviewing Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till, I quot the following passage:

Picked, individual blackens, and one bleeds a thick r sap. Indian pipe, a weed that thrives upon rot, is held in disesteem, although it does have its use in nature's scheme, unlike the rose