This post was written by guest blogger Susan Ramsey.

Over at The Academy of American Poets they spent the month of January doing literary CPR, trying to jolt a pulse from our post-holiday sensibilities by posting a short essay on poetry every day. While it may be pushing it to call them “debates and manifestos,” and while there are a certain number of fish-in-a-barrel pieces (and in spite of the fact that the Academy stubbornly declines to include National Book Critics Circle nominee and all-round dandy poet Bob Hicok in their “Find a Poet” gallery,) you can always count on Joan Houlihan to keep the conversation liiiiiively.

I date my affection for her from the day she referred to Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” as the “Desiderata” of our generation….