Gift fail!
This may be one of the most headshaking holiday articles I've read this year.
For those that don't want to read it, I'll summarize: the writer is attempting to find the one universal and thoughtful holiday gift that can be given to each and every person on the holiday gift list. So far, so...huh, but moving on. (I am assuming children's gifts are not involved.) After considering and discarding various possibilities (cookies - yes! cookies! who discards COOKIES???? Cookies are the entire point of the holiday season! :: eats cookie JUST TO MAKE THE POINT :: Also, perpetual calenders, umbrellas, memory sticks, plants, and, um, Sarah Palin's autobiography) the article settles upon this as the perfect universal holiday gift:This brings me, at last, to the perfect universal holiday gift: Good Poems, a collection curated by Garrison Keillor. It's unabashedly middlebrow in the best sense of the word. Keillor isn't for everyone, but these poems are[....]Even people who don't seek out poetry, or people with an overdeveloped poetic muscle who swear they only read late-period Ezra Pound, will find something in here to like. If, that is, they have a shred of humanity. And you should tell your ungrateful wretch of a best friend exactly that if she looks a little crestfallen when she unwraps it.
The book hits a crucial target-it's general, but feels personal. Each recipient will be under the impression you thought long and hard about how to warm his soul this cold winter, when, really, you're working with an industrial-grade furnace. (If you really want to go in for the kill, bookmark a couple of poems that seem particularly well-suited to your giftee's taste.)
Look, I realize that this is meant to be slightly tongue-in-cheek. And yes, like all poets I like to harbor under the happy delusion that everyone loves poetry and my poems in particular. But the truth is, some people just don't like poetry. (Worse, some people don't like my poems in particular.) Even more people do not like poetry assembled for their delight by Garrison Kellior. Were I to gift certain people [names carefully omitted, but you know who you are] with a book of poems for the holiday, regardless of what was in the book of poems, I would be greeted with at best a blank stare and a frantic attempt to express polite gratitude, or more probably, a request for the umbrella.
By all means, if your gift recipients love poetry, give poetry. Otherwise, stick with the cookies.
(You'll all excuse me while I go hunt down those cookies in the kitchen. They are being terribly, terribly loud, and that sort of cookie behavior deserves the appropriate response.)
(Edited to add link. ::headdesk:: I blame the cookies.)
For those that don't want to read it, I'll summarize: the writer is attempting to find the one universal and thoughtful holiday gift that can be given to each and every person on the holiday gift list. So far, so...huh, but moving on. (I am assuming children's gifts are not involved.) After considering and discarding various possibilities (cookies - yes! cookies! who discards COOKIES???? Cookies are the entire point of the holiday season! :: eats cookie JUST TO MAKE THE POINT :: Also, perpetual calenders, umbrellas, memory sticks, plants, and, um, Sarah Palin's autobiography) the article settles upon this as the perfect universal holiday gift:This brings me, at last, to the perfect universal holiday gift: Good Poems, a collection curated by Garrison Keillor. It's unabashedly middlebrow in the best sense of the word. Keillor isn't for everyone, but these poems are[....]Even people who don't seek out poetry, or people with an overdeveloped poetic muscle who swear they only read late-period Ezra Pound, will find something in here to like. If, that is, they have a shred of humanity. And you should tell your ungrateful wretch of a best friend exactly that if she looks a little crestfallen when she unwraps it.
The book hits a crucial target-it's general, but feels personal. Each recipient will be under the impression you thought long and hard about how to warm his soul this cold winter, when, really, you're working with an industrial-grade furnace. (If you really want to go in for the kill, bookmark a couple of poems that seem particularly well-suited to your giftee's taste.)
Look, I realize that this is meant to be slightly tongue-in-cheek. And yes, like all poets I like to harbor under the happy delusion that everyone loves poetry and my poems in particular. But the truth is, some people just don't like poetry. (Worse, some people don't like my poems in particular.) Even more people do not like poetry assembled for their delight by Garrison Kellior. Were I to gift certain people [names carefully omitted, but you know who you are] with a book of poems for the holiday, regardless of what was in the book of poems, I would be greeted with at best a blank stare and a frantic attempt to express polite gratitude, or more probably, a request for the umbrella.
By all means, if your gift recipients love poetry, give poetry. Otherwise, stick with the cookies.
(You'll all excuse me while I go hunt down those cookies in the kitchen. They are being terribly, terribly loud, and that sort of cookie behavior deserves the appropriate response.)
(Edited to add link. ::headdesk:: I blame the cookies.)