At the Foxhead on Election Night

Appeared in the Press-Citizen November 7, 2008

How to say it except to say it straight?
I saw things on Tuesday night that I
never expected to see and which I’ll try
to tell to my grandkids, who’ll say I exaggerate:
the first black man elected president
amidst fears of war and economic depression;
McCain delivering a genuinely touching concession;
a white man from Alaska, his head bent,
crying after hearing Obama speak;
Chicago’s million-strong all-nighter;
and, to cap off a night of dreaming, a writer
walking into the bar as usual, except this week
his date was a life-size doll of Uncle Sam,
and he was giddy and smiling, and it wasn’t a sham.









More on Good Bad Poetry:

"Writing Good Bad Poetry"
"My Poetic License"
"OMG! Buddhist Nun Texting Novel"
"Dinosaur Descendant to be Dad at 111"
"Cat Chasing Mouse Leads to 24 Hour Blackout"
"Man Faces Jail for Smuggling Iguanas in His Prosthetic Leg"
" 'Lingerie Mayor' Vows to Stay in Office"
"O.J. Simpson Questioned in Vegas Incident"

Sudsy Politics: Then & Now

Awash in campaign ads, anticipating its share of the $700 billion bailout, and looking forward to tonight's town-hall debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, "Poetry & Popular Culture" looks backward more than a century to the presidential campaign of Republican Benjamin Harrison, who served one term as President from 1889-1893. Without radio or tv at his disposal, Harrison found an unlikely poetic campaign ally and endorsement from Snow & Silver Soaps manufactured by Thompson & Chute of Toledo, Ohio, which—on the trade card pictured above—plugged Harrison's campaign with a little ditty titled "Victory":

Election day is near at hand,
To choose the President of our land—
One of honor, strength and hope,
Who uses SNOW and SILVER soap.

In every place, from every mouth,
From east to west, from north to south,
The people's voice will sure attest,
That SNOW and SILVER are the best.

The wrappers, too, will bring a treasure,
Which gives unbounded joy and pleasure.
Mail twenty in to our address,
A gift most rare you will possess.

Forgive "Poetry & Popular Culture" for being a little bit cynical in noting that Snow & Silver soaps fail to mention Harrison by name in their advertising poem, relegating his likeness to the reverse side of the card. I wouldn't be surprised to find a similar card published by Snow & Silver that has Grover Cleveland—Harrison's Democrat opponent and then-incumbent president—pictured on it as well. Indeed, like Big Oil or any industry seeking a lobbying presence in D.C. today, Snow & Silver soaps is playing two sides at once (literally), possibly even using the same vague poetic endorsement to promote both candidates. After all, as their poem indicates, the soaps' desire is more to ensure their own commercial success than to endorse any particular candidate or platform.

Indeed, Snow & Silver is positioning itself not just as an equal opportunity endorsement, but as a purer expression of American democracy than the election! Buoyed by "the people's voice" and available to one and all, the soaps offer—at the minor inconvenience of sending in a couple of wrappers—"a gift most rare" to any American seizing the chance. Characteristically vague in this respect as well, the ad withholds what, exactly, that gift will be: a $10 gas card? A new hybrid? An oil slick in Alaska?

If all this sounds eerily familiar, consider that we were talking a lot about the Cleveland/Harrison election a few years ago when Al Gore won the popular vote and our beloved W won the electoral vote. Indeed, it was the 1888 election that saw the Democrat Cleveland win the popular vote while sudsy-slick Republican Harrison took the electoral vote. Karl Rove or no Karl Rove, it's clear that, a century later, political endorsements, campaign ads, and the U.S. electoral system have yet—soap or no soap—to clean up their acts.

Postscript: In the time since the foregoing entry was posted, I had occasion to contact University of Illinois professor of English Cary Nelson, who has assembled a very large archive of 19th- and 20th-century advertising poetry. Nelson has confirmed my suspicions that, yes indeedy—you guessed it—Snow & Silver did in fact issue a trade card with the likeness of Cleveland on one side and the same "Victory" poem (pictured above) on the other. Pick a card, any card: it's business as usual.

Palin Poetry Watch: Rhymes of the Times

While "Poetry & Popular Culture" has yet to hear from Palin or the Palin/McCain campaign about Palin's poetic preferences, it is clear that some folks are getting poetic in their opposition to the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. On September 14, an "Alaska Women Reject Palin" rally was held in Anchorage in front of the Loussac Library and drew nearly 1500 people. According to some reports, it was the largest political rally ever held in Alaska and much larger than the previous pro-Palin gathering that attracted a lot more coverage from the so-called liberal media. One eye-witness reports:

"When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

"Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here."

Befitting its literary location in front of the public library, some of the homemade signs rhymed—reading "Hockey Mama for Obama" and "The Alaska Disasta," for example—and others like the raven image shown above were indubitably poetic (or Poe-etic) in origin. It seems that while Palin and the Palin/McCain campaign may be closed-lipped on the subject of her relationship to this blog's favorite genre, it's clear that her well-versed opposition is not.

Boy Doles Out Fake $20 Bills

Appeared in the Press-Citizen on September 15, 2008

Inflation and unemployment are high.
Freddie and Fannie are low.
Another month in Iraq goes by
And everyone's short on dough.

So when Georgie starts passing out cash
everyone's friends of his.
No one asks where he's hiding his stash
or what the boy's motive is.

They pocket the money and give him a grunt
but never look at the jack:
there's a picture of John McCain on front
and Sarah Palin on back.

Palin Poetry Watch: Palin Not Forthcoming

"Poetry & Popular Culture" is still trying to learn whether Sarah Palin has a favorite poem. Several readers of this blog have suggested Palin's preferences might run toward the classic religious verse "Footprints," but despite two weeks of phone calls and emails from "Poetry & Popular Culture," both the Palin and Palin/McCain offices have yet to respond. Perhaps they're too busy getting their tax statements in order to at least make them public?

"Poetry & Popular Culture" has called the following offices in Alaska & elsewhere, hoping to get in touch with the Governor to discover her poetic proclivities:

• Juneau at 907-465-3500
• Anchorage at 907-269-7450
• Fairbanks at 907-451-2920
• Kenai at 907-283-2918
• D.C. at 202-624-5858

• McCain office at 703-418-2008
• McCain office at 703-418-2008

• McCain campaign email at ideas@mccain08hq.com

To this point, however, "Poetry & Popular Culture" has encountered only a bridge to nowhere, and speculation is beginning to mount about Palin's tastes. Is she a fan of Robert Service's "Cremation of Sam McGee"—a popular Alaskan ditty even though Service himself is from Canada (a nation, like Russia, next to Alaska and hence a probable site of Palin's foreign policy experience)? Perhaps she prefers Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose"? "Poetry & Popular Culture" hesitates to publicize other speculations out of a committment to journalistic fairness, but this blog is nonetheless beginning to wonder if Palin's reticence to respond suggests, in fact, that she has something to hide...

Biden's Bard

Breaking News: "Poetry & Popular Culture" has just learned, from sources sorta close to the Biden campaign, that the vice-presidential nominee's favorite poem may well be Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy" (Heaney's translation of "The Philoctetes" by Sophocles) and especially the lines in the third stanza below which Biden has repeatedly quoted:

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

What's the appeal for Biden? While "Poetry & Popular Culture" has been unable to reach Barack Obama's running mate himself, our source sorta close to Biden comments: "I think Heaney's poem taps into the growing sense of frustration that this country feels, knowing our past flirtations with rebelling against inept power. And I think this poem is appropriate for Joe and Barack because together they represent hope and history."

Go team.

It's interesting to note that while Biden attaches himself to Nobel Prize-winning Heaney, and while Obama was once friends with politcal poet and civil rights activist Frank Marshall Davis, John McCain's choice verse might well be William Ernest Henley's 1875 poem "Invictus." Indeed, writing for The New York Times on January 21, 2008, William Kristol reported that McCain had to memorize Henley's verse in school and still has it by heart. For Kristol, McCain's affinity for Victorian-era poetry suggests that McCain himself is "not thoroughly modern"—as if the Original Maverick's inability to use email and the internet weren't evidence enough. "John McCain," Kristol writes, "Is a not so modern man. One might call him a neo-Victorian—rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled." "Invictus" ends:

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

"Poetry & Popular Culture" now eagerly awaits McCain's choice of running mates. What shall his or her poetic preferences be?