Gloria Vando, co-editor of “In the Black: In the Red: Poems of Profit $ Loss” (photo by Anika Paris)
Reflections on money fire Helicon Nine’s “In the Black: In the Red: Poems of Profit $ Loss”
“In the Black: In the Red,” an anthology of 197 poets and artists, arrived early in 2025 from Helicon Nine Editions but began as a book project following the recession of 2008. The subtitle tells the story, “Poems of Profit $ Loss.” I have one poem in it, which time would have lost were it not tucked away those years in the files of Helicon Nine. One of the original editors, Philip Miller, died in 2011, and the press moved from Kansas City, Kansas, to the West Coast, delaying but not suppressing the editorial drive. Moreover, poems and art about money turn out to be especially necessary now, with government layoffs, tariffs, and attempts by the president to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The editor of Helicon Nine, the eminent poet Gloria Vando, co-editor of this book with Anika Paris, includes thumbnail photos of the poets next to their bios in the back. Most if not all the photos were collected in the early days of the book project, so, for me, it’s like seeing pictures of friends in my school yearbook. Many are no longer with us — or maybe they are, utterly transformed — William Jay Smith, with his newsboy tweed cap; Philip Levine, before being a U.S. laureate; my dear friend Elaine K. Lally, founding member of The Writers Place in Kansas City; the great Michelle Boisseau, an inspiration to all who knew or read her.
“It was Mrs. Garvin, the doctor’s wife,” Boisseau writes in “Eavesdropping,”
who told my mother, well if you’re that broke
put the kids up for adoption.
This book reveals our complicated relationship with money, especially for those who grew up without much of it. Economists might control macro policies, but I see here that poets are more of a match for micro subtleties. “I think of my father who believes / a Jew can outwit fate by owning land,” writes Robin Becker in “The New Egypt.”
The effect of money concerns on children, in this and Boisseau’s poem, resonates through the book and for many of us through life. “From my father,” writes Becker, “I learned the dignity / of exile and the fire of acquisition.” Boisseau’s youngest of many siblings, Denise, worried about being evicted so much she took to sleepwalking. “Her fear,” writes Boisseau, “already seeping into me like water.”
Naomi Shihab Nye eyes a squirrel in a tree beside which her father’s ashes lie, and the poet thinks of an altered world. “For all who lost jobs last week,” she writes — prophetic of Project 2025 and its irreverent dismissals — “here’s a day that feels like a hollowed-out tree.” These poems will shake you with their currency and currentness. “Is it possible to fret,” Nye asks, in this poem from years ago, “over Gaza — jobs — and Joaquin Phoenix — in the same breath?” Here we are, again, in the now.
Circling such complexities, some poets and artists inject the kind of humor that includes the Boisseau kids plotting a midnight escape out the bedroom window, and Walter Bargen — Missouri’s first poet laureate — pondering “Centuries of Profit,” in which,
The first human shooting
from a cannon is the first human
and not the last to miss the target.
As such, the collection starts with an incantation to the language of money, itself. “It greases the palm,” writes Dana Gioia, “feathers the nest, / holds heads above water, / makes both ends meet.” The fun of any subject-based anthology is its vocabulary, and this book knows the nomenclature, coming up with “Money. You don’t know where it’s been,” says Gioia, “but you put it where your mouth is.”
Now, I look at the faces in the bio section again and think, I don’t know where you’ve been. While the anthology took some time to emerge, the poems and art — including a charcoal by Margo Kren — might have stored up power during their hibernation. The faces of the poets and artists are so darn sweet in their freshness, they allow me to remember our essential qualities: some rugged, champions of poetry; some open faced, ready to greet a friend; some distinguished now but then just baby-faced geniuses; some old friends: Stanley Banks, Trish Reeves, Greg Field, Harvey Hix, Wyatt Townley, Albert Goldbarth, the inestimable Maryfrances Wagner and more. You, there, are my fortune.
The publisher herself, Gloria Vando, buoyantly beautiful artistic builder, says that this might be the final publication from Helicon Nine, which started in Kansas City in the late 1970s as an international journal for women’s arts and letters; in the early 1990s, the press shifted to publishing books by Judy Ray, Phyllis Becker, Donna Trussell, Ann Slegman (Isenberg), and so on. Around that time, she and her husband, the late Bill Hickok, founded The Writers Place in Kansas City, which thrives to this day, though Bill — poet, humorist, mentor to many — died in 2014, and they had previously moved to Los Angeles.
Gloria has a special excitement, I think, about creating anthologies. Once, at a party at her and Bill’s Kansas home, the poet William Matthews mentioned a new poem of his about potatoes.
“I have a potato poem,” Gloria added, excitedly.
“I actually just wrote one,” I blurted. All true.
“We should do an anthology of potato poems,” Gloria said, which is how such projects got going. I became co-editor of that anthology, called “Spud Songs,” a benefit for hunger relief, with poems by Heaney, Boland and Knoepfle, yes, and also Finnell, Kinnell and Wakoski.
“In the Black: In the Red,” perhaps the last Helicon Nine edition, embodies the sustained energy necessary to create any new book, especially with 197 poets and artists collected into a bound volume, with interest solely in accruing fidelity to the effects of money, its politics, importance and over-importance, with not a single statistic or theory to mislead you.
To purchase a copy, visit itascabooks.com/products/in-the-black-in-the-red-poems-of-profit-loss.
