So I'm looking for a great political poem for my presentation...

[belladonna]

I haven't been here in AGES, I know. Between work and now, going to school full-time as well, I only have time to lurk and rarely any time to post :cry:

I'm taking Oral Interpretation this semester and have to present a poem. I really want to do something totally different than the usual Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, etc. thing and I'm trying to find some PUBLISHED poems that speak to the political climate we find ourselves in these days. I found a few sites that had political poetry, but they mostly seemed to be poems sent in by people at random and not published poems. So who wants to help me blow my class away AND give me a chance to vent while getting a good grade? :P: Anyone?

[Richardo]

1. Not a poem, but "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain

Will tear your heart out.

Maybe you could read it as a poem :)

[belladonna]

2. I wish I could, but too long

It has to be around 4 to 6 minutes in length, so no dice on that one. :-(

Thanks for the suggestion though!

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. Here are some

You may want to check out this site:
http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/


From this site: http://www.illyria.com/poetry.html

Two Sides of War (All Wars)

"All wars are planned by older men
In council rooms apart,

Who call for greater armament
And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field
Where golden dreams turn gray,
How very young the faces were
Where all the dead men lay.

Portly and solemn in their pride,
The elders cast their vote
For this or that, or something else,
That sounds the martial note.

But where their sightless eyes stare out
Beyond life's vanished toys,
I've noticed nearly all the dead
Were hardly more than boys."

~Grantland Rice

[belladonna]

4. Thank you!!

This one is definitely on the short list and I'll check out those sites as well! :toast:

[Radical Activist]

5. My favorite by Vachel Lindsay

Its about William Jennings Bryan so it may not be modern enough for you, but its somewhat famous and I like it. You may have to cut out one or two section to make it short enough.

http://www.geocities.com/vachellindsaybryan/

[belladonna]

7. Hi sweetie!!

I've missed you!! :hug:

It is a bit long, but a great poem! I'll e-mail my teacher and ask if we can cut verses to make it the right length. Thanks!

[MsAnthropy]

6. James Thurber wrote "The Last Flower"

http://pages.zdnet.com/storysocks/library/id58.html

[Lilyhoney]

8. I have a first edition printing of this book.

It is something that I look at often. It is sad, but that flower pops back up.:)

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

9. How about "Good Clean Fun" by Diane DiPrima?

I had used this once before at a tribute reading. It's a bit out-of-date since it's from the 90s, but overall it still rings true.

From the book, "Poems for the Nation: A Collection of Contemporary Political Poems" ed. Allen Ginsberg, Andy Clausen, Eliot Katz

It's terrorism, isn't it, when you're afraid to answer the
door for lack of a Green Card
afraid to look for work, walk into the hospital when yr
child is sick,

and what else than terrorism cd you call those smallpox
blankets we gave the Indians
the trail of tears, the raids on Ghost Dancing tribes
It's terrorism when you're forbidden to speak yr langauge
paddled for it, made to run a hundred laps in the snow
in your thin & holey sneakers. What do you call it
when you're locked in yr high school classroom, armed
policemen
manning the halls? Isn't it terrorism to force a young
woman
to talk to her parents abt her clandesine love
the child she will or will not carry? Is it terrorism
to shoot striking onion workers (1934), pick off AIM
members one by one?

What happened to the Hampton family in Chicago--
Fred Hampton blown away in his bed--
would you call that terrorism? Or the MOVE kids in
Philadelphia
bombed in their home. Or all the stories we don't know
buried in throats stuffed w/socks, or pierced w/bullets.
Wd you call it terrorism, what happened at Wounded
Knee
or the Drug Wars picking off
the youth of our cities--as they already picked off
twenty years ago--or terrified into silence--the ones
who shd be leading us now--
you know the names.
What was COINTELPRO if not terrorism? What new
intitials are they calling it today?

Is Leonard Peltier a victim of terrorism?
Is Mumia Abu-Jamal?

Is it terrorism if you are terrified
of the INS, the IRS, the landlord, yr boss, the man
who might do yr job for less?
If you're scared of yr health insurance
no health insurance
scared of yr street, yr hallway, scared every month
you might not get the 1st and the next measly check?

Is it terrorism to take food from hungry school-kids?
To threaten teenagers who still have hope enough
have joy enough to bring babies into this mess?

How has terrorism touched you shaped you're life?
Are you afraid to go out, to walk in yr city, yr suburb, yr
countryside?
To read, to speak yr own language, wear yr tribe's
clothes?
Afraid of the thin-shelled birds w/twisted necks
poisoned by nitrates, by selenium?
Afraid that the dawn will be silent, the forests gray?
Is it terrorism to fill the Dnieper w/radiation?
or heat the ionosphere w/magnetism "to see what will
happen"?
A wonderful weapon, they say, it will perturb
the weather pattern, disrupt communications
Who are the terrorists in the lumber wars?
(the water wars are coming)
And we haven't even talked about AIDS and cancer

IS THE ASSAULT ON NATIVE INTELLGENCE &
GOOD WILL
THAT WE CALL THE EVENING NEWS
ANYTHING OTHER THAN AN ACT OF TERROR?

What was the Gulf War but terrorism
wearing the death mask of order?--one big car bomb it
was
the guys who drove it dying now
one by one--ignored

Is acid rain a form of terrorism? (Think for yourself)
Is GATT or NAFTA anything but a pact among
brigands--the World Bank, the IMF their back-up
men?
How long before they fight over the spoils? Who'll do
their fighting for them?

Is Alan Greenspan perhaps the biggest known & named
of our terrorist leaders, here, nutured here,
trained here

the dark design of whose hearts make
Hutu & Tutsi
Croat & Muslim & Serb
mere diversionary tactics before the onslaught

[belladonna]

11. Wow, I really love this!

It might be a bit long but I think it might just work! Thanks!

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

15. Just in case you need it...

It was published by "Seven Stories Press" NY, NY in 2000.

[belladonna]

16. Thanks again!

I was just looking around for it!

[ComerPerro]

10. Fuck that. How about some dirty limericks instead?

A man comes home to his wife, and he is chuckling. His wife asks him what is so funny.

"A limerick I heard today at work. But I can't tell you," he says. "It's too dirty."

"Don't worry, I've heard them all," she replies.

"I really can't, it's the dirtiest limerick that I have ever heard!"

"OK," his wife says. "How about you tell it, but substitute the word 'beep' in the place of the really dirty words."

"Fine," he says. "Here goes:
Beep beep-beep beep beep-beep beep beep,
beep beep-beep beep beep-beep beep beep.
Beep-beep beep beep beep,
beep-beep beep beep beep,
beep beep-beep beep beep-beep beep."

[belladonna]

12. I bet I could make up some great dirty limericks about Bush!

Unfortunately, I AM looking for a good grade so I better not :-(

[Taxloss]

13. Martin Niemoller might be good.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.


On edit: a better-known but less precisely translated version:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

[belladonna]

14. I thought of that one, but it's just too short

Too bad, because it does speak to a lot of the things that are going on these days... sad, but true ;(

[Taxloss]

17. In that case, I'll recommend the obscure Boer War poem I always

tout in these circumstances. The final lines could be about Iraq - indeed, it was much the same kind of war. Plomer is underrated, IMHO.

The whip-crack of a Union Jack
In a stiff breeze (the ship will roll),
Deft abracadabra drums
Enchant the patriotic soul-

A grandsire in St James's Street
Sat at the window of his club,
His second son, shot through the throat,
Slid backwards down a slope of scrub,

Gargled his last breaths, one by one by one,
In too much blood, too young to spill,
Died difficultly, drop by drop by drop-
'By your son's courage, sir, we took the hill.'

They took the hill (Whose hill? What for?)
But what a climb they left to do!
Out of that bungled, unwise war
An alp of unforgiveness grew.

--- William Plomer

[rug]

18. Suicide Nation by rRchard MacWilliam

SUICIDE NATION

This is how you commit suicide.

First, you decide that your neighbour is not human,
Worthy only of your contempt.
Having succesfully dehumanised your brother,
You then exclude him from jobs and self-respect,
Stripping his dignity to the raw-bloodied bone.

Next, you go hard - not soft -
And resist his inevitable reaction,
Tightening down the screws,
Destroying all that he believes in,
Showing - in every way -
Your superiority.

Now you realise that you have unleashed a whirlwind,
And are too shame-faced and bolshy to back down.
In your stupidity you must go forever forwards,
Destroying all that is important
For the sake of your own self-image.

As your soul begins to corrode
Your voice gets ever shriller
And your self-justification ever louder.
Your brother is now causing all your pain,
And therefore it is your brother's fault,
And nothing to do with you.

As you descend into self-contempt
And a louder, brasher outside that hides
The trembling, fearful inside
You elect a hard-faced mass murderer
Who will hide your shame in simple certainties
And loud, heroic deeds.

Now you must destroy, destroy, destroy,
Because there is no backing down from your hardness
Which is your certainty
Which is all that you have left
In an uncertain world.

First you destroy the infrastructure of your brother's land,
So that he must look to you - with loathing -
For jobs and food,
And this in turn feeds your utter contempt.

Then you murder -
Loudly proclaiming your 'war on terrorism' -
All the minor leaders in your brother's government,
Thinking that this will destroy your brother,
When all it does is make every individual
Their own leader.

Finally you destroy all your brother's law-enforcement apparatus,
Thinking this will render him impotent,
When all it does is render you impotent,
For now you have a lawless
Leaderless
Angry mob
With nothing left to lose
Looking down the long barrels of your guns.

Unsurprisingly, your actions have now driven hatred
Deeper
Into the heart of your brother and his family,
And you must now reap
What you have sown.

You can now murder your way
Through every one of your brother's family,
His close friends,
And then his friends across the water -
Or you can sit down and reason.

Unfortunately your leader is beyond reason,
Which is why you elected him
(For his moral certainty)
And he would rather destroy his own nation and the world
Than lose face.

Your suicide is nearly complete.

It awaits only the actions of one maddened general,
And then it will be done.

R.I.P.

[idgiehkt]

19. two old ones that come to mind are

Dulce and Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

and

I Sing Of Olaf Glad and Big
by e.e. cummings
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15408

[dpbrown]

20. I published a poem online. It's in my journal

It's called "Outrage" and I wrote it about the Iraq invasion.

[belladonna]

22. That's a great poem!

I'll have to time it and see if it'll work. Thanks!

[southpaw]

21. This one by e.e. cummings

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

-- e. e. cummings


Seems so fitting lately... a war-apologist politician using jingoistic sloganeering to justify the deaths of soldiers.


Or, as someone mentioned in a previous post, "I sing of Olaf glad and big"

[nickgutierrez]

23. Ozymandias -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Not so much our current political climate, but it's an excellent job of skewering imperial arrogance. There isn't much poetry that I really like, but this bit by Shelley is one that I really, really do.

[LeftishBrit]

24. I like this from 1846 - and still all too relevant

http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/usa/goodtime.htm

[Ramsey]

25. This is an old poem that speaks to the age

Poem by William Blake

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of war! When the senses
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance
Drive the nations together, who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;
When souls are torn to everlasting fire,
And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,
O who can stand? O who hath caused this?
O who can answer at the throne of God?
The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it!
Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!