I
have a
post by that title up on Huffington Post on this, the two year anniversary
of the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast. I'm lucky
enough to have it featured on the home page of the site -- thanks HuffPo! I
went to New Orleans in October of 2005 and again in April of this year, and
while some homes have been gutted and some neighborhoods rebuilt and some lending
programs established in the intervening 20 months, so much of that city stands
frozen like it was just after the storm came through.
The post doesn't get into policy or politics, really, though those are the root reasons why New Orleans is still stuck on August 29th, 2005. Jane called it an "emotional" piece. I'm okay with that. It's meant only as a reminder. Poetry is about the grief, politics is about the grievance, right? I'm not saying that piece is poetry, but it's more or less about the unending grief of the Gulf Coast.
(The photo is from a house I helped to gut on Caffin Street in the Lower Ninth, working with ACORN. More photos from that trip here.)
