In January 2017, The Nickster (Nicholas Kristoff) announced a "Donald Trump Poetry Contest" and some of the contributions filled today's essay in the NY Fishwrap. This blogger liked/appreciated all of the selected entries — save one. Perhaps The Nickster must be even-handed with the inclusion of a hateful selection by a Moron-supporter in Asbury, NJ. This blogger is under no such constraints in this blog: the blogger hates the Moron-in-Chief and is sorry there isn't more of 'im. And, the hatred is even more intense toward the morons who voted for a person lower than pond-scum to defile the Oval Office. There is no pity for any of that despicable lot: may they all experience the worst that life has to offer. No exceptions and no exemptions. If there is a Hell, may they all burn together for eternity. And their Moron-in-Chief may bring about a conflagration that will rain fire and fury on all of them. If this is a (fair & balanced) post-election wish, so be it.
[x NY Fishwrap]
Trump Is Inspirational ... For Poetry
By The Nickster (Nicholas Kristoff)
TagCrowd cloud of the following piece of writing
My readers have the best words, as Donald Trump might say. Evidence for that comes from the caliber of the 2,750 poems submitted to my Trump poetry contest. With the help of the Poetry Society of America, I’ve picked my winners, and here they are, offering us a mix of humor, bite and hope.
Richard Kenney, a published poet from Port Townsend, WA, offered “A Prayer”:
Dear Generals Three:
If he asks for The Football,
Link arms: Take a knee.
Lisa Grunberger, an associate professor at Temple University who is Jewish, wrote about the vandalism of her house in Philadelphia. An excerpt:
A “J” spray-painted on my olive green house in South Philly,
Its white-hooked tail grazes my daughter’s head.
A skinhead, says my neighbor Jorge,
Un racist blanco, no entiendo,
Holding my hand inside his hand
Far longer than any gringo would.
He smells of sawdust and cologne.
I shoot a picture with my phone
Of my daughter underneath the “J.”
Evidence is always good to gather.
She traces the letter with her small finger.
She’s just learning about how letters
Make words, and words make sentences.
Doesn’t yet know sentences can kill:
Arbeit macht frei. Sentences can lie:
Make America Great Again. Sentences
Can heal: I have a dream. She’s fished
A pen from my bag and draws a “K” beside the “J.”
Advanced Placement students at Pittsburg High School in a high-poverty part of the San Francisco Bay Area offered several excellent poems. Natalie Calderon, a 17-year-old Latina student, wrote “Deception”:
America, the so-called land of the free
But is it still free if I take a knee?
Our president wants to “Make America Great Again”
But keeps putting roadblocks in the path of equality
I’m worried things will only get worse from here
I adjure to feel secure but how can I when
My so-called leader is acting so immature
My hope in humanity is fading
Because of all the degrading
My heart hurts as racism is pervading
I feel anger in my soul as it anchors my stomach
My spirit is damaged by the baggage of hate I carry
But I must stay strong for the struggles to come
I just hope my pride doesn’t go numb
Many entries attacked Trump, but not all. John Zengel of Asbury, N.J., says he’s a conservative who disagrees with Trump but thinks Democrats need to drop the condescension. He wrote this poem, “Perspective From a Hard-Working American,” to reflect the thinking of his father:
What the liberal elite don’t get
Is that Trump speaks my language.
If that makes me a racist, so be it.
I’m a hard-working American.
You say you love the poor,
But your sympathy goes to Africa,
And my taxes are given to takers.
What about hard-working Americans?
Your tree-huggers are after our jobs;
Your “values” are after our families;
Your diversity is after our God
Threatening hard-working Americans.
So go ahead, ignore us “deplorables”
And laugh at his scandals, his stupidity, his immorality, his hair.
But who will be laughing in ’20?
Us hard-working Americans.
Some of the verse was despairing, but Michael Collins of Salem, OR, wrote about making a difference in “No Matter How Small”:
I’m sorry for my tone, of late.
It’s tiring, decrying hate,
And likely tiresome as well
But ever since the hammer fell
And Trump ascended to the throne
I’ve told myself my voice alone
Won’t make a difference, but that I
Should not interpret that: Don’t try.
The Whos that only Horton hears
In Dr. Seuss’ book reached ears
Besides the elephant’s when they
Cried all together, so, O.K.,
I’ll keep on shouting, We are here!
A waste? Perhaps, but it’s sincere.
In a similar vein, Lee Robinson, a retired lawyer in Comfort, TX, ended her elegy on an uplifting note. Her poem, condensed here, is called “Who Says Trump and Poetry Are Incompatible?”
We know a poem can be maniacal, the best ones
Always unpredictable. Don’t poets sometimes rave?
Pound for example: profound, but mad as the Hatter,
And maybe a traitor. As for the tweets, if Dylan Thomas
Were still with us, might not he tweet his late-night sullen art?
Perhaps only poetry, after prose has failed us,
Is brave and big enough for this Trumpian time.
Think of Wordsworth, The world is too much with us,
Or Arnold: And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Dickinson would tell us to turn the TV off, the phone
And iPad too: The Soul selects her own Society.
Did Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock foretell our president
Come whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbling…
But if I had to choose one poem to give to him,
I’d give him [Maya] Angelou:
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
# # #
[Nicholas D. Kristof writes op-ed columns that appear twice each week in The New York Times. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he previously was associate managing editor of The Times, responsible for the Sunday Times. Kristof received a BA (government, Phi Beta Kappa) from Harvard College and then received a BA (law) from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." Kristof's most recent book (with wife and co-author, Sheryl WuDunn) is A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (2014).]
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