Potato Poem by Robert Wrigley

for Jean Follain


Here we have Idaho, monsieur Follain,
a mountainous American province known—
famous, as a matter of fact—for its potatoes:
les pommes de terre célèbre! Less so, its poets.

You likely never heard of it, O brother in poems
and more, meaning, of course, les pommes
de terre, which, yes, my home state is famous for.
But alas, your Célébration de la pomme de terre,

out of print in France, has never appeared en anglais,
and I have spent most of a frustrating day
trying to procure it en français, and have failed.
The problem seems to be having it mailed

trans-oceanically. The seller will send it gladly
to any nation in Europe, but not to l'États Unis.
Pardon my French, my pomme de terre patois:
there's tater and spud, but nothing with such sang-froid

as apple of the earth, earth apple, a little figure,
a tiny poem tinier even than the tiniest of yours,
the tart apples of your verses, your other, better love
than potatoes, peut-être? And yet, I must have,

I confess, the potato book, and have therefore pressed
a fluent francophone colleague into service,
who has had it sent to a friend in Belgium, from thence so
on to me, here in America, here in Idaho.

Why? Because, like you, I love—no, j'adore
les pommes de terre almost as much as I adore
your poems: the child with the wild red hair,
the thousand year rain, the peace that decays forever.

Here, monsieur Follain, we have the potato
in such quantity that the singular state of Idaho
grows all the frites françaises McDonald's ever sells,
our gift to the chef de cuisine of that culinary hell.

Although, I confess, I love French fries too,
and perhaps, with your book, I'll find that so did you,
who may at last make clear to me what a potato is worth—
famous potatoes, mere potatoes, poems of the earth.