One of the most controversial poems of the early 2000’s.

The Change

by Tony Hoagland

The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.
In the park the daffodils came up
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.

Sometimes I think that nothing really changes—

The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he’s a dummy.

But remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes

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Read rest of poem at The Writer’s Almanac

Since Tony Hoagland wrote “The Change” about a decade ago, the poem (from What Narcissism Means to Me, Graywolf 2003) has been praised by African-Americans and whites, and attacked as racist by almost as many—or maybe more. That readers find the poem painful is understandable. Hoagland probably intended the poem to cause pain. But “The Change”…is a narrative poem about the inevitability of political change. It is also is a poem which believes that white liberals’ relationship to race is more complicated than our consciously held and universally agreed-upon opinion that Racism is Bad. “The Change” is no exaggerated satire of racist America: The speaker is not white, working class, uneducated, reactionary and ignorant. On the contrary, Hoagland’s unnamed speaker is by affect moderate, cultured and middle-class. He uses racial stereotype as if having a “what, me racist? I’m only an observer” chat at the office. Because the poem obscures the boundary between poet and persona, it’s a deeply uncomfortable poem. -Daisy Fried, from Tony Hoagland’s “The Change” (Poetry Foundation) 

Read Claudia Rankine’s response to the poem, from an AWP Conference address in 2011: Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry

and here is Hoagland’s response: Dear Claudia: A Letter in Response

Both are fascinating….

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