As Americans gather for Thanksgiving in a nation battered and brought low by rampant disease and division, you may ask: What in this of all years do we have to be thankful for?
More than a quarter-million lives have been lost to a scourge that at this time last year no one knew existed. Wildfires and hurricanes have ravaged great swaths of the country. Trusted institutions — science, post offices, the vote — have been politically assaulted.
Jobs have disappeared. Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Lines stretch for blocks at food banks. Students cannot sit in classrooms or travel home from colleges without a face-masked ordeal of quarantine, swabs and evasive maneuvers. Neighbors cannot break bread safely around Thanksgiving tables, assuming they still have the will.
Yet gratitude persists. Last week, we asked poets laureate across the country why the people in their states would be thankful. They enthusiastically responded, some within minutes, many with poetry.
“I am thankful for friends,” wrote Nebraska’s state poet, Matt Mason:
for the palette of Nebraska
sunsets, for my family,
still alive, thank God,
thank the Med Center
“Lately, I’d been wanting a little light — and there it was,” wrote Karen Craigo of Missouri, describing a stand of small trees that “glowed like campfires” and made her think about other blessings.
In Maine, Stuart Kestenbaum summoned “gale force winds along the coast in the morning” and thanked the crew — “these men doing their jobs” — that repaired his downed power line in the dark, in head lamps.
“It’s not hard for Californians to know whom to thank in 2020,” wrote the state’s most recent poet laureate, Dana Gioia. “Four million acres of the Golden State went up in flames this fall. We thank — profoundly and prodigiously — the fire, police, and emergency personnel, as well as the prison volunteers, who risked their own safety to protect us.”
Oregon’s poet laureate, Anis Mojgani, was grateful, too, “for the earth still / having not released us.” His predecessor, Kim Stafford, recalling the catastrophic wildfires that swept through that state, wrote of another savior: “rain nipping flame’s root, gray mud of ash.”
And in Minnesota, Joyce Sutphen gave thanks for
snow that comes down from Canada
covering the leaves we didn’t rake
and how sometimes after that, we
get a heat wave and a second chance
to put things right in the world
Not all states responded. The New York Times request came with some prosaic conditions — 100 words or less on a newspaper deadline, a tall order for an exacting art form. Some states have no poet laureate. New Jersey abolished the post in 2003 amid controversy, and Idaho replaced it in the 1980s with a broader “writer-in-residence” appointment. The last full-time poet to hold that job, Diane Raptosh, who has also served as poet laureate of Boise, offered that state’s poem.
Still other states were between poets. In California, Mr. Gioia’s term ended in 2018 and the governor has yet to appoint a successor. Illinois had been without an official poet since 2017; we received submissions from its last laureate and the poet who succeeded him on Wednesday.
But the many writers who did respond reflected a widespread, if weary, appreciation, both for regional grit and more universal blessings. Many wrote, in these socially distanced times, of the humanity and fellowship around them.
Hawaii’s poet was grateful for “tight-knit island communities,” Wyoming’s for “neighbor helping neighbor / despite long distances,” and Alabama’s for a state where people “rally to help each other out in times of crisis.”
And North Carolina’s for “North Carolinians” and “the many ways we have gathered together to take care of each other.” And South Dakota’s for “food, resources, / each other — love and fear’s first real test.”
Paisley Rekdal of Utah wrote of “something unusual: crowds in the canyons.” Bobby LeFebre of Colorado reached out on social media to crowdsource that state’s thanks for “love, familia, health, work, creator, community, cultura / resilience, art, abolitionists, education, imagination, clarity / life, truth, weed,” and much more.
Beth Ann Fennelly of Mississippi was “grateful to be counted on: One Mississippi, Two. Grateful for the word y’all. Grateful for the emphatic all y’all.”
“After many and much / have been taken from us, we gather what remains / like hallowed guests at our otherwise empty table,” explained Kevin Stein, the last Illinois poet laureate, who was succeeded by Angela Jackson.
She was grateful for “waystations / Peopled with all kinds / Of people — / All colors / A One / In the Land of Lincoln.” Similarly, Virginia’s poet laureate, Luisa A. Igloria, recalled the toppling of Confederate monuments in the racial reckoning of the summer and gave thanks “for the thousand-thousand bodies / marching in the hearts of grieving, / inflamed cities.”
M.L. Smoker and Melissa Kwasny, Montana’s poets laureate, wrote jointly that “after 125 years, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians was finally granted federal recognition.” Next door, Ms. Raptosh wrote four “Gratitude Sonnets,” praying that the “vowels within Idaho” can “slipper us into some new, non-tribal unities.”
Kari Gunter-Seymour of Ohio name-checked Zoom, “a window of windows inside a dollhouse,” and she was not the only one. Grace Cavalieri of Maryland thanked it for bringing poetry, which “can’t be stopped by calamity.” Alexandria Peary wrote that people in New Hampshire were glad to look up from it and “see Mount Washington in their living room window.”
“Thank you for drawing the crow outside my window,” wrote Mary Ruefle of Vermont. “Thank you for drawing the wrinkled bittersweet berries.” Tina Cane of Rhode Island cited “sweeping ocean views / that give a sense of peace and wonder and hope, some space to rest.”
In New Mexico, Levi Romero was “thankful for remedios, te de cota, manzanilla, osha,” and in Kansas, Huascar Medina wrote, gratefully, that “some of us are going to save a lot on our small Thanksgiving dinners,” including, perhaps, one another. Larry Woiwode in North Dakota thanked the “dual poles of the Dakota mind: / Faith and work” and between them, another remedy: “the common Act of art.”
In Kentucky, Jeff Worley offered art, too — a sampler of books by his state’s writers and poets. Chelsea Rathburn in Georgia, looking at a picture her daughter made last Thanksgiving, asked her what she was grateful for in 2020. “That this year is nearly over,” the 8-year-old replied.
Delaware’s poets, the twin brothers Al Mills and Nnamdi Chukwuocha, saluted their fellow Delawarean, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. And Peter Meinke wrote an ode to Florida, which “voted for Trump and would again if given a chance.”
Running through the responses was a thread: gratitude just to still be here. Maybe that’s appropriate for a holiday that we trace to Pilgrims who were desperate not to die of starvation, and that was made official by a Civil War president who was desperate for his divided nation to have something, anything, in common, even just one meal in November.
Still, it is striking: On a day we have come to celebrate for comity and plenty, we stand apart this year and give thanks, even in our poetry, for simple survival.
“You see we’re still holding on here just enough,” wrote Marc Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia, “despite all we’re doing wrong.”
We received nearly three dozen submissions in all. Here is a sampling:
By Stuart Kestenbaum
Poet laureate of Maine
Gale force winds along the coast in the morning, gusting up to 60 miles per hour. A Norway Maple comes down in our back yard, falling on both cars, taking down the power line, and ripping the cable and electrical meter right off the side of the house. We call the power company. There are power outages throughout Maine and the crews have to wait until the wind dies down. Around 9:00 pm we hear the bucket truck pulling up. Two men, one just starting out, the other a veteran, get out, turn their head lamps on and work in the dark, lifting the line and reattaching it. We thank them, these men doing their jobs. Line by line, through the woods, off miles of two-lane roads, power gets restored. “You’re our last stop for the night,” one says. “We’re going home for supper after this.”
By Kari Gunter-Seymour
Poet laureate of Ohio
By All Indications
I spent time today studying
forehead lines, linked into yet another
Zoom meeting, my screen a window
of windows inside a dollhouse.
I like to think I have good ears
and what I hear from Ohioans
is this — grateful.
Grateful for a governor who believes
in masks and distancing, feeding
displaced school children and poetry.
Grateful for an unusual autumn of sun
and balmy breezes prevailing
well into November, leaves clinging
to their colors like a Matisse painting
or a toddler with a fist of Crayolas.
The election is over. Time moves,
then moves again and forehead lines
are bar charts, flesh and bone
diagrams of courage.
By Kevin Stein
Former poet laureate of Illinois
After Many and Much
have been taken from us, we gather what remains
like hallowed guests at our otherwise empty table.
Feast of hunger, insatiable if consolable, we welcome
the checkout girl whose eyes smile above her mask,
our improv Zoom bedtime stories, his smile-pained wave
behind panes of glass, corn in its bin and acres harrowed
before snows, assembly lines birthing their progeny,
the crimson maple leaf alighted in a boy’s front-porch lap,
the ballot cast, the television muted like index to lips,
shoosh — This sudden apothecary of hope like sugar
upon the tongue, your ungloved hand in mine.
By Beth Ann Fennelly
Poet laureate of Mississippi
Grateful for old men, white and Black, weathered as the sweet potatoes they hawk from the beds of their pickups at every other highway exit. Grateful for the sweet-potato-colored dirt those tubers are pulled from. Grateful for bales of hay, both blocky like Legos and round like sushi. Not grateful for sushi in Mississippi, but for 16/20 gulf shrimp sold in coolers at Texacos. Grateful for the mystery of tamales. For fireflies, bald cypress, magnolia green jumper spiders. Grateful to launch ruby-throats over the gulf each autumn. Grateful to be their welcome mat come spring. Grateful to be counted on: One Mississippi, Two. Grateful for the word y’all. Grateful for the emphatic all y’all. For all y’all in this state of hospitality: Grateful.
By Luisa A. Igloria
Poet laureate of Virginia
“The New York Times ranked the Robert E. Lee monument, in its current form, as the most influential work of American protest art since World War II. The 130-year-old monument honoring the Confederate general has been covered in graffiti since early June when protests and social unrest gripped Richmond, and the nation, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.” — Richmond News
Poem With Statues Falling
It was the summer we took
heads, toppled statues of despots& slaveholders off their gleaming
plinths; elsewhere, tipped theminto the oily depths of rivers.
It was the summer we gave thanksfor the thousand-thousand bodies
marching in the hearts of grieving,inflamed cities — how they brought
brave songs & chants, paint &chalk, words & light to project
the hopes which we must bindtogether so we become our own
living, breathing monuments.
By Anis Mojgani
Poet laureate of Oregon
thankful for the bend
without the breakthe branch beneath the weight of the finch
lightboned they bethe shake of a fir to alight a sky
for the earthstill having not released us
from their embracetheir rivers that peak
those starson clear nights
swimming through bothfor the crows
consistent in their cawas if saying wake
the morning lies in the streetwanting of me to be bronzed with its kiss
that every day in my citythe people strengthen together
for something unseen and powerfulfor somewhere in the distance
the ocean callinglike an answer
lifting toward a grace
spoken for someone elsecoming back to that which had tossed it
from where it had been thrown
By Kim Stafford
Former poet laureate of Oregon
In Fire Season, Rain
The soft smoke of hard rain
drilling down through tree bones.
The hiss and steam of quenched fire —
rain nipping flame’s root, gray mud of ash.
Rain tap slapping your hat. Rain gloves.
Rain making your coat heavy, your neck cold.
Rain washing what was seared, culled, fallen, lost.
Where fire fed, rain offering rest, restoration.
Rain turning eye-salt to rivulets, rivulets
to rivers wheresoever many weep as one.
Rain thrust deep in earth, seeking seeds.
Rain taking its own sweet time.
Earth’s thirst for first rain —
never to be cursed again.
By Christine Stewart-Nuñez
Poet laureate of South Dakota
The pandemic puts pressure on love
and presents fear with a new playground.
Love’s learning to teach our sons art,
math, reading; it’s cooking three meals a day
and remote working under the microscope
of one another’s gaze. Unmoored, we click
on graphs, charts, photos. Testimonies
of the sick, the dead, and the survivors
shape and story our fears. Metaphor falters
when we scrutinize the data, and we can’t
find beauty there. Love’s reaching for
each other only to find our scars relaxed.
Inside these walls, we have food, resources,
each other — love and fear’s first real test.
By Matt Mason
Nebraska state poet
When Asked What I Am Thankful For
I am thankful for friends,
for the palette of Nebraska
sunsets, for my family,
still alive, thank God,
thank the Med Center (UNMC)
who’s held back this flood
(so far)
despite my elected representatives’ best
negligence, thankful
for my Hawaiian-print face mask, for this
red sofa I commute to for work,
thankful not to
work at UNMC, at a middle school,
a rural highway packing plant,
Harley dealership in the Sand Hills,
which means I am thankful,
horribly, for the
luck of this landing,
for the bullet
that hits next to me,
the guilt
walking with me
in this wide sky silence,
following every step.
By Larry Woiwode
Poet laureate of North Dakota
Thanksgiving, 2020
On North Dakota’s wrinkled, ironed plain,
A rise or hill can seem a monument,
Reminding one of Calvary, Zion’s reign,
With trios of crosses crowning tented
Buttes, emblems of renewal and maybe more.
On other hills and mesas metal monsters
Proffer broken necks — threshing machines, a score
Or more, tokens to combines bankers sponsor,
Their computer antics superintended by
A farmer freed from labor of the kind
That felled his father generations shy
Of 2020; dual poles of the Dakota mind:
Faith and work. Between the two, in every
Village, township, town-hall stage — drama,
Dance, sad comedy, trumpet up the common
Act of art, an exercise in love and praise
That will occur on this of all Thanksgiving Days.
By Joyce Sutphen
Poet laureate of Minnesota
Thanks, With Northern Lights
In Minnesota, from Main Street
to Highway 61, from Paisley Parkto Park Rapids, we’re thankful for
snow that comes down from Canadacovering the leaves we didn’t rake
and how sometimes after that, weget a heat wave and a second chance
to put things right in the worldso we can meet our friends in a park
and savor being together (safelyapart). We feel so lucky that we smile
our biggest smiles behind our masks,making our eyes crinkle and shine
like the elusive Northern Lights.
By Karen Craigo
poet laureate of Missouri
Last Scraps of Color in Missouri
Today I passed a stand
of trees: tall, closely packed,
bare and almost black
from rain. But underneath,
I saw smaller trees, just
getting started on their slow
snatch-and-grab of sky,
and I saw these were golden
still, and they glowed
like campfires in the dark.Lately I’d been wanting
a little light — and there it was,
and all I had to do was turn
my gaze a few degrees
from center. Some blessings
find us when we move to them —
they’re waiting only to be seen.
Near the end of a difficult year,
may we spot the light,
as we breathe in prayer
or supplication: Show me,
Show Me, show me.
By Eugene M. Gagliano
Poet laureate of Wyoming
The Blessing of Wyoming
Wyoming residents
are grateful having been spared
much of the suffering.
We enjoyed fresh air outdoors,
free to roam vast grasslands,
massive mountains carved by nature,
furrowed deep canyons, and valleys
sewn together by icy streams.
We watched herds
of mountain reigning elk
and prairie pronghorn.Each new day was a gift.
Even the drought and winds
couldn’t dry out our spirit.Board games, puzzles and books
became important again.
We looked after each other
neighbor helping neighbor
despite long distances.
We nourished our faith and
appreciated more family time.
We reached out to old friends
became even more aware of
the people and the natural
blessings of Wyoming.
By Angela Jackson
The poet laureate of Illinois
Giving Thanks
Illinois, 2020
We give thanks —
For red cardinals that appear
Anywhere,
For violets, pristine and tender,
And tall white oaks
That bear
The weight of midwestern winds
Moving across the prairie
State.
Thanks
For the kiss of the Great Lake
Michigan, on a Big Chicago, bodacious and bursting With promises
Thanks for the lakes and rivers that flow through A state of dreams and blood and tears, Thin rivers of toil that lace the land
And a Big River, Mississippi,
That runs.
Thanks for mid-cities churning industry For rural places poised on tractors
And waystations
Peopled with all kinds
Of people —
All colors
A One
In the Land of Lincoln
Lifting Freedom, Union, yes
We pray for each other
In all our heartbreaks.
We give thanks
For hope,
For family, for dear ones,
And neighbors
For “I love you”
Written on the red wings of cardinals,
On the sweet petals of violets,
On the strong brown branches of oaks.
We give thanks
Thanks and thanks.
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