Ode to James Tate

If someone held a gun to my head
And asked who’s my favorite poet?

I’d say, what has this world come to
Where men are held at gunpoint

For literary aesthetics? And then I’d say,
There are too many to name, the day too short,

The beach too vast and free to think about
Anything other than riding a longboard

At sunset, flying a kite in early Spring,
But since you are holding a gun to my head,

I guess I’d have to say, James Tate.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Conduit, Georgia Review, Electric Literature, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Timber Journal, Witness Magazine, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.