While thinking about Adam Clay’s post on poetry’s role in addressing poverty and desperation, I stumbled across Wikipedia’s entry on the concept of the American Dream. The phrase was coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America. Adams wrote:

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Something to consider if any of us work up the nerve to write about our modern day tent cities.

“Pantoum of the Great Depression” by Donald Justice:

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don’t remember all the particulars.

I couldn’t help thinking of this while listening to the news this morning.