Poetry: Serious. Not That Serious.

Poems For My TV HeroinesIn honor of Veronica Mars becoming a movie, I've curated a poem for each of my all-time favorite TV ladies.Connie Britton as Tami Taylor, Friday Night LightsFor the great, epic love of Tami & Coach: From 25^TH Anniversary by Linda Pastan”¦But here we arelike the married couplefrom Cerveteri who smilefrom their 6^th century sarcophagusas if they are giving a party.How young we were in Rome, buyingtheir portraits on postcards,thinking that we toowere entangled alreadybeyond amputation, beyondeven death, as we areas we are now.Kate Walsh as Addison Montgomery, Private PracticeFor the troubled line of love/life/spiritual questioning Addison goes down on this cry-your-eyes-out, touch-your-soul series:From A Primitive Like an Orb by Wallace StevensThe essential poem at the centre of things,The arias that spiritual fiddlings make,Have gorged the cast-iron of our lives with goodAnd the cast-iron of our works. But it is, dear sirs,A difficult apperception, this gorging good,Fetched by such slick-eyed nymphs, this essential gold,This fortune's finding, disposed and re-disposedBy such slight genii in such pale air”¦Katie Holmes as Joey Potter, Dawson's Creek For that teenage love angst, for boats:From Envoi by Carl Phillips”¦I dragged what boats I couldto the shore and piled them severally in a tree-less space, and lit a fire that didn't takeat first—the wood was wet—and then, helped bythe wind, became a blaze so high the seaitself, along with the bodies in it, seemedto burn. I watched as each boat fell to flame:Vincent and Matthew and, last, what bore your name.Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, HomelandFor trying to stay afloat in a sea of terrorism and mental illness:From The Attic by Cynthia HuntingtonI seem to remain, somehow, myself,to remain at least something, at a lossto know how much can be taken from meand leave me only changed, not ruined,alert in an emptiness so aliveI recognized it as my life. What would be left,the shape of it then, this life? I said some beauty,or radiance, an endless space I fall intoor am taken up by, a brightness that holds me,gathers light in the center of empty space,like a vision of the life I have not lived.Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Sex in the City  For complicated romance and aging:Chicken Little by Eliza Griswold:I'm through! I'm through!she says and resays.The years pass.Her feathers gray.Her eggslay themselvesless frequently.The sky falls.And of course, Veronica Mars herself: For being smart, snarky, and young:From Prodigal by Bob Hicok”¦attack the world with your ambition,invent wonder plasmas,become an artist of the provocative gesture,the suggestive nod, you could leavewanting the world and returncarrying it, a noisy bundleof steam and libido, a ball of firebalanced on your tongue”¦