"Ethics" was published in the early 1980s, when the U.S. economy experienced a decided upturn after two decades of civil unrest and an uncertain position in the global market. Perhaps it is no accident that an economics of worth is what drives the poem's ethical question, "which would you save, a Rembrandt painting / or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow?" When Republican Ronald Reagan became President in 1980, the country was ripe for economic reform. The former actor's plan, later dubbed "Reaganomics," involved drastic cuts in taxes and social spending, and resulted for a while in steep declines in interest and inflation rates, and the appearance of millions of new jobs.

In retrospect, however, that economic prosperity benefited only a few. The wealthiest five percent of Americans celebrated twenty percent gains, while three-fifths of the population, at the lower end of the economic...