*Originally Published in the August 2023 Newsletter* Last September, Fred Franzia, creator of the famously cheap Charles Shaw red wine, died. Recently, a resurfaced article by Eric Asimov of the *New York Times* on Franzia and his “two buck Chuck” vinicultural revolution prompted me to recollect an episode in grad school when a poet friend poured me a glass of Charles Shaw and, sensing she had a snob on her hands, winked at me and said, “what’s the difference”? The tone of Asimov’s article is largely one of grievance. The idea of budget wine threatens him: instead of a world where the pursuit of pleasure leads to questions—e.g., where a wine comes from, how’s it made—curiosity joins the cork in the wastebin. Bragging about a cult wine you know nothing about is just as insincere as growing defensive over some Central Valley plonk when you have never challenged your palate with anything else. How many times has a friend told me they prefer* not* to be able to taste quality? It’s the old Orwellian approach to the marketplace—ignorance is strength. But a trained nose knows good wines can be found at nearly any price point, and there is almost always an undervalued gem for the food and the mood. Armchair epicureans can pose similar questions about the nature of pleasure with regard to any number of consumer goods, including books of poetry. The snob argues life is too short to read bad poetry; the libertine reads without caring what anyone else thinks, which seems to miss much of the point: a key part of culture is waging convivial, if serious, disputes over matters of taste. While part of wine’s fascination will always be the luxury of scarce vintages, poetry, and literature in general, is largely exempt from this odious law of supply and demand. The aspiring wine buff, if money is no object, can drop a few hundred bucks on a Bordeaux in hopes of gaining access to an elite world of taste. While one could buy a first-edition Apollinaire for the same reason, it’s hard to argue that a reprint closer to the two-buck price point wouldn’t accomplish much of the same thing. #@callout There is a certain kind of purity to poetry’s difficulty—like our great wildernesses, the challenges and rewards of poetry remain available to every American, even if most of us only ever drive past on the interstate. Rupi Kaur retails for essentially the same price as Emily Dickinson. In the public library, Drake’s entry into the poetry market is shelved between Carl Dennis and Stephen Dunn (their books are cheaper to buy, though). Certainly there are those literary posers who purport to understand or appreciate something they don’t (or worse, something no one could), and there will also be reverse-snobs who insist on blaring banality. The old prejudice that poetry is too obscure, too affected, and too wordy for the common man to appreciate is itself a kind of sneer, when in fact ordinary Americans have no trouble bearing nuance in their music’s lyrics. If most people aren’t reading contemporary verse, it’s probably because it’s not marketed to them. There is a certain kind of purity to poetry’s difficulty—like our great wildernesses, the challenges and rewards of poetry remain available to every American, even if most of us only ever drive past on the interstate. That most people lack the time, inclination, or training to access the depths of this primal beauty detracts nothing from the beauty itself, which has no particular responsibility to be “accessible” any more than a Barolo has an obligation to be cheap or a bison has an obligation to pose for a selfie. The Whitmanian idealist would say poetry, given its portability, abundance, and diversity, is a great resource of American democracy; the Barnumesque retort would be that Americans are constitutionally unwilling to appreciate anything they haven’t paid for. Yet as we test the prison of our schedules and the free-market stockades that herd us all toward pay-to-play, Franzia and Asimov combine to offer a teachable moment. There are no shortcuts into the deepest wilderness. The pursuit of meaning in pleasure—as opposed to meaningless pleasure—is beset by switchback and shadow. Money taints such distinctions in the world of wine, whereas poetry is free of stain. As lovers of poetry, we can strive for the unquantifiable, for experiences that are wholly irreducible to class and price. Or as Tennyson wrote,* I will drink / Life to the lees*.