Ted Genoways, _This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm_

SALES PROSPECTS FOR poetry being what they are (Rupi Kaur apart), it makes sense that poets like Paul Auster (back in the day) or Ben Lerner or Lucy Ives (more recently) take a swing or three at writing a novel. A whole host of poets have produced memoirs of various kinds. But here's a question for all unsalaried poets: how about journalism?

Might sound crazy--a good many poets are introverts, and journalism requires going out and talking to lots of people, for one thing; for another, poets rely on figuration and imagination, and journalists are supposed to adhere to the literal and the actual. 

But consider Ted Genoways. After two poetry collections and a variety of editorial work, he turned to journalism focusing on food production, with not only more-than-respectable sales but also some book awards.

Granted, the move makes more sense for Genoways than it may for other poets. He is a relatively traditional poet who relies on precise observation and economy of phrase. He is not given to what is often called "poetic prose," even though it is not all that poetic nor very effective as prose. His writing is not at all vague or impressionistic or over-decorated; rather, it is poetic in the best sense, taut, focused, graceful. The lyric touches do not float about freely, but instead highlight vividly precise statements:

The Miller Nitro Sprayer, a cherry-red colossus on 6-foot-tall all-terrain tires, rolled up to the edge of the freshly-planted field of corn. The twin booms of the spray-rig were spread out in either direction, like a pair of enormous dragonfly wings, unfolded and lowered by a system of hydraulics.

Genoways is likewise skillful in blending his frequent forays into contextual information--the history of irrigation in Nebraska, the development of seed corn hybrids, the Ogalalla aquifer, the rigors of farm markets and farm financing--into an up-close, intimate portrait of one farming family. The Hammonds would have made a good book all by themselves, and the context Genoways provides on contemporary family farming would have made a good book all by itself. He has managed to make an excellent book by doing both at the same time--a remarkable accomplishment.

Around here This Blessed Earth is getting compared to Agee's and Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I'm not ready to  go that far--we'll have to wait and see what posterity says--but the comparison is not outlandish, and that's saying a lot.