LSU Press author Danny Heitman wrote an op-ed for the Sunday, Aug. 16 edition of The New York Times in which he wonders whether poetry can help the ailing U.S. car industry. He bases his essay on a series of letters in 1955 in which renowned American poet Marianne Moore tried to help Ford Motor Company come up with a name for one of its cars.
Readers can read the essay here.
Heitman is the author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.” Published last year by LSU Press, the book chronicles a pivotal season that Audubon spent in Louisiana’s West Feliciana Parish in 1821. The book is being adapted as a documentary that Louisiana Public Broadcasting plans to premiere in December.
“LSU Press has a great poetry line, and I hope that my op-ed on poetry will, in a small way, help advance of the profile of poetry across the nation,” Heitman said.