jckatz's Full Review: Calvin Trillin - Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush...
Calvin Trillin is the “dead-line” poet for The Nation.
This means he is required to write one poem a week for the Nation, some are short and some are shorter, but he always gets paid the same.
Yet, the length is not what is important about these poems, it is the way they enter your head and shake things around, an example.
THE MESSAGE OF THOSE SPREADING RUMORS ABOUT JOHN MCCAIN’S “TEMPERAMENT” Imprisonment and torture are the sort Of things that might just drive a person daft. So just in case that happened to McCain, Let’s stick with candidates who dodged the draft Published Dec. 13, 1999
Notice how it brings to focus the failure of other peoples thought processes? So many of his short poems do just that.
Besides the title and the poem there is some text between the chapters to help put the reader back in the year these poems were written. To be honest I could not remember how in G-ds name McCain lost, he won the first primary and then Bush ran away with it, I had assumed it was money, but he reminded me of the awful negative attacks McCain suffered, attacks an Illinoisan might never had been aware of.
Here is an excerpt of one of those pages, “Bush’s huge campaign war chest made him a strong favorite. Then McCain trounced him in New Hampshire. In the south Carolina primary, a must win for the survival of the Bush candidacy, rumors cropped up about McCain – about his mental state, about his family. It was whispered that McCain’s years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese had made him unstable.”
But never fear this book isn’t all Bush all the time, Calvin takes aim at anyone around Bush that has a name that is easy to rhyme.
ON TWO MEMBERS OF THE WAR CABINET Don Rumsfeld Meets the Press
With condescending smile so tight,
He seems to take a great delight
Explaining to the press this fight,
As if they’re kids who aren’t too bright.
When wrong he needn’t be contrite:
Don’t might and arrogance make right?
Colin Powell, ALAS
His memory of war was strong.
No Sissy Hawk, he’d fought the Cong.
He knew that bunk on nukes was wrong.
But, still, he chose to go along.
Of him, they’ll sing the saddest song:
“But, still, he chose to go along.” Published, Nov 17, 2003
The book is 112 pages, and there are about 1 1/2 poems per page, some times one and sometimes two even a as many as three.
This book is perfect for the bathroom, you can sit down and open it to any page, and give you something to think about.
This is my first review of poetry and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have picking up the perfect poems for it.
One last thing, if you go to google and type Bush is the worse president since, you will find a great debate about what presidents are worse then Bush.
From the Publisher: Does the Bush Administration sound any better in rhyme? In this biting array of verse, it at least sounds funnier. Calvin Trillin ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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