Patriotism and Poetry

with a soupçon of snark

The presidential debate is old news. Biden’s stumbling performance shocked those who have been sheltered from reality. Perhaps, in turn, Trump’s performance shocked me because I have been sheltered from reality. In Trump that night I saw a leader. Not perfect. But then, neither are any of us.

The attempted assassination of Trump is not yet old news. There are whispers and concerns about how this could have been allowed to happen, who made it happen, how many people were involved, whether it was staged. Of course there are. I don’t know that we will ever learn the truth. But in the moment, in the moment after Trump dodged a bullet and ducked for cover and assessed himself and found himself only trivially injured, in that moment, he made a brilliant political move which did not merely energize his base. Oh no. It brought many of us in.

That night I saw a unifying force. I saw a patriot.

Trump’s secret service detail tried to get him off the stage and into a car and he said wait wait wait, wait. Wait.

He stood, made a hole for himself in his security detail so that he could see the crowd—and so that the camera could see him—and fist pumped at all of us.

Fight. Fight. Fight.

And yes, we will.

---

Do you remember when we were told, wistfully, that once Biden got into office, things would go back to normal, and that this would mean that we wouldn’t have to think about politics every single day? That, apparently, is what Trump was doing to some Americans—making us think about him all the time, and it Just. Wasn’t. Fair¹.

And yet, it seems to me that with Biden as our figurehead, there are many of us who are in that very space. I don’t want to be thinking about politics all the time. I would like to have elected leaders who are trustworthy and competent. But under Biden, nothing is as it seems. We are given platitude after platitude, and they just keep on being wrong. It is difficult not to be concerned.

Instead of more politics, here are three poems that I find thought provoking. Perhaps you will too.

---

This Is the Land of Missed Opportunity

By Steve Cannon

This is the universe

where fortune

finds itself

in love

with misfortune.

This is the territory

Of slackers,

Where nothing changes

But change.

This is a place

in space

where everyone says

to the other,

“you blew it,”

and nothing,

if ever,

gets done.

Published in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Edited by Alan Kaufman. Thunder’s Mouth Press 1999: 618.

---

The Vacation

By Wendell Barry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

Published in Good Poems. Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. Penguin 2002: 295.

---

Cast-Aluminum Espresso Pot

By Elizabeth Macklin

Where one mother cleaned the pot,

scrubbing and boiling

the thing in ammonia, one did not.

One left a light film of coffee on,

as much as would not

come off with water alone, and some rubbing.

So? What harm would it do?

The pot grew brown over

time: it showed how a flame threw

heat in a black design from a blue burner

over the years, and how you, too,

could get away with not having everything silver.

Published in Sustenance & Desire: A Food Lover’s Anthology of Sensuality and Humor. Edited, with Paintings, by Bascove. Godine 2004: 18.

---

---

Culture Chickens*

1. In an attempt to keep the snark to a dull roar in the main piece, I’m relegating this to a footnote. The January/February 2024 issue of The Atlantic Monthly was entirely dedicated to the question of what will happen If Trump Wins. Some answers included that another Trump presidency will—I kid you not—destroy journalism, and science, and “instill a culture of fear in classrooms.” Yeah—that was definitely Trump who did those things.

In the article on ~science, Sarah Zhang uses liberals’ liberal use of yard signs as evidence that they are super science-y, and bemoans the fact that “it’s hard to imagine” Trump supporting the CDC. Often, I imagine a world in which scientific literacy is as widespread as actual literacy, a world in which the people who conflate following authority with being pro-science are appropriately recognized as buffoons. At other times, however, I just hang my head in my hands. Sometimes it seems that we have too far to go.

And in this piece in the same issue, Jennifer Senior argues that Americans simply can’t handle the chronic stress of another Trump presidency. (There are definitely some safe space culture chickens coming home to roost here.) Among other phrases that Senior actually chose to publish are these: “There were times, during the first two years of the Biden presidency, when I came close to forgetting about it all:…the press conferences fueled by megalomania, vengeance, and a soupçon of hydroxychloroquine.” And also, in referring to the Americans who support Trump: “we should brace ourselves for a second uncorking of what Philip Roth called ‘the indigenous American berserk’.” Basket of deplorables, anyone?

*The (safe space) culture chickens are a poster that I admired and was gifted by my friends as a teenager in the 1980s, and it now hangs in my 18 year old’s bedroom.