A Box of Longing with 50 Drawers

A poetic deconstruction of America through one of its key documents -- in the tradition of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsburg -- this collection by noted poet-performer Jen Benka consists of one poem (in sequence) for each of the 52 words that comprise the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Her revision of America's secular prayer finds the unspoken hopes and frustrations of people marginalized from the political process. She expresses a profound regard for the possibility of America, while delineating the many ways in which America fails to deliver on its promise -- and below that, what is happening to the individual psyches within a nation that has lost faith in itself.