Vs.

Recently I received an invitation from Marc Pietrzykowski to participate in his new project, Vs., and online journal of deliberative poetry. What's deliberative poetry? From the About section of Vs.: "Using poetry to argue, debate, and deliberate about issues extra-poetical lost favour in the English speaking world around the time of the Romantics, and we hope to reintroduce the practice. Using poetry to insult, berate, and slander one's fellows also has a long history in the Western scheme of things (and others) . . ."

It sounded fun so I'm participating. Nine other poets and I have three weeks to respond in poetic form to the question: ""What can poets do to help improve the quality of public debate in the U.S?"

I never really thought about that before, but I'm going to have to decide on a strong position before I start writing.