Courtesy of Bookslut, I ran across this "poetic map" of the U.S. today, and it's heartening (though perhaps a bit outdated? I see none of our fabu reading series mentioned) to see the poetry that's flowed from the shores of the, uh, fifth coast.

Also, I consider us close enough to Potosi to justify sharing this, from Howard Nemerov:

Found Poem
by Howard Nemerov
(after information received
in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 v 86)

The population center of the USA

Has shifted to Potosi, in Missouri.

The calculation employed by authorities

In arriving at this dislocation assumes

That the country is a geometric plane,

Perfectly flat, and that every citizen,

Including those in Alaska and Hawaii

And the District of Columbia, weighs the same;

So that, given these simple presuppositions,

The entire bulk and spread of all the people

Should theoretically balance on the point

Of a needle under Potosi in Missouri

Where no one is residing nowadays

But the watchman over an abandoned mine

Whence the company got the lead out and left.

"It gets pretty lonely here," he says, "at night."

From War Stories by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1987 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov. All rights reserved.

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Posted under STL in the News by Amanda Doyle on Fri., Oct 7, 2005 at 12:44 PM