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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Hip-Hop Wallace Stevens

Stevens wrote this poem in 1942. Say it out loud; it sounds like an election-year commentary written in hip-hop lyric: Idiom of the Hero I heard two workers say, “This chaos Will soon be ended.” This chaos will not be ended, The red and the blue house blended, Not ended, never and never ended, The […]

Stevens wrote this poem in 1942. Say it out loud; it sounds like an election-year commentary written in hip-hop lyric:

Idiom of the Hero

I heard two workers say, “This chaos
Will soon be ended.”

This chaos will not be ended,
The red and the blue house blended,

Not ended, never and never ended,
The weak man mended,

The man that is poor at night
Attended

Like the man that is rich and right.
The great men will not be blended…

I am the poorest of all.
I know that I can not be mended,

Out of the clouds, pomp of the air,
By which at least I am befriended.

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