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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Richard, This Is Stupid Stuff

I take A.E. Housman’s point about the importance of poetry, but I can’t bring myself to enjoy the Inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, excerpted here: Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom, buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos […]

I take A.E. Housman’s point about the importance of poetry, but I can’t bring myself to enjoy the Inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, excerpted here:

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me — in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

Yadda yadda. Bleah. Why do we even have inaugural poems? JFK had one written for him by Robert Frost, but after him, only Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have had them. I prefer the Republican strategy.

I would like to commission from you readers an Inaugural limerick. Let’s hear what you’ve got. Keep it clean, you Nantucket rowdies.

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