While most congregants in the United States spend their Sunday mornings in a church, you’re more likely to find twentysomethings in New York City attending Our Lady of Bottomless Mimosas on the Lord’s day. The service typically entails an offering of eggs rothko, adoration of cute waiters, and readings from the New York Times’s Vows section. This recurring ritual, more commonly known as “brunch”, provides solace and nourishment, with just a touch more alcohol than the standard Catholic mass. During one such service, though, the rites that unfolded offered me a very rude revelation.

Item 151. Perhaps the most important literary correspondence we’ve ever offered: an unrecorded handwritten letter from Herman Melville to G.P. (George) Putnam, publisher of Melville’s first novel (Typee) and several of his short stories. This letter doesn’t appear in The New Melville Log or Correspondence, but its provenance is an unbroken chain, and the handwriting unquestioned. All pages have minor foxing; a few unobtrusive tears on page two; one coffee-ring stain on page one partially obscuring the date; several large (including one full-page) blue-pencil question marks scattered throughout. Important, compelling, and rare.

If I were a copyright lawyer for Disney, I’d do my best to preserve the purity and wholesomeness of their intellectual properties. I’d bust head shops for Rastafarian Mickey Mouse pipes, with their dreadlocks and painted bloodshot eyes. I’ll tell them: that privilege is for authorized retailers only.

So I know it’s been a while. I don’t really have an excuse. But I’m back. Hey. Maybe it was turning 40 that did it. Or that cold that knocked me out for two weeks. (The same one the kids got that slowed them down for about two minutes.) I used to be able to bounce back from that shit overnight. But I’ve come to the painful realization that I’m not young anymore. So like any good, albeit lapsed, Catholic facing her inevitable mortality (God, I’m such a cliché!), I’ve started going to church again. You already know that, though, don’t you?

There can be little doubt that poets do not contribute greatly to society. Their work, produced in vast abundance, is nearly valueless to our species. Indeed, the great bulk of their efforts are simply given away; the poems cannot be sold. Yet, I believe that poets are capable of contributing meaningfully to the human endeavor and I propose the following ways in which we may put poets to use.