I happened to have a subscription to American Poetry Review when Stephen Dunn's "The Insistence of Beauty" appeared there. I was immersed in what was a vibrant writing scene for a community college and showed it to everyone who stumbled into my apartment for a drink with me or one of my roommates whether they were a writer or a skater or one of Matt's girlfriend's friends that was waiting for them to get dressed. Seeing the news of Bretagne's passing and the video of her going into the vet for the last time my mind jumped back to that poem and the resonant image so I decided to type it up and post it because I love the exercise of typing pieces that you enjoy and admire. I hope you enjoy it as well.





The Insistence of Beauty

by Stephen Dunn



The day before those silver planes

came out of the perfect blue, I was struck

by the beauty of pollution rising

from smokestacks near Newark,

gray and white ribbons of it

on their way to evanescence.



And at impact, no doubt, certain beholders

and believers from another part of the world

must have seen what appeared gorgeous—

the flames of something theirs being born.



I watched for hours—mesmerized—

that willful collision replayed,

the better man in me not yielding,

then yielding to revenge's sweet surge.



The next day there was a photograph

of dust and smoke ghosting a street,

and another of a man you couldn't be sure

was fear-frozen or dead or made of stone,



and for a while I was pleased

to admire the intensity—or was it the coldness?—

of each photographer's good eye.

For years I'd taken pride in resisting



the obvious—sunsets. snowy peaks,

a starlet's face—yet had come to realize

even those, seen just right, can have

their edgy place. And the sentimental,



beauty's sloppy cousin, that enemy,

can't it have it's place too?

Doesn't a tear deserve a close-up?

When word came of a fireman