Of Poetry and Politics

I can no longer pretend it’s possible to leave politics out of my work and off this blog. I write poems about those things which matter most to me. In good times I write about grandchildren and Lake Michigan. In bad times I must sometimes write about our nation’s descent into cruelty and betrayal.

The tipping point was Donald Trump’s pronouncement that Ukraine started its war with Russia. This absurd contention turns objective truth on its head. Trump is asking us to buy into his own version of DC Comics’ Bizarro World of Htrae (if you read Superman comics in the 1960s, you’ll understand the reference). In Htrae – Earth spelled backwards – everything is the opposite of reality. In Trump’s Bizarro World, Ukraine is evil and Vladimir Putin represents truth and justice.

Ukraine, which for three years has fought mighty Russia to a standstill, has been hung out to dry by Donald Trump. In the judgment of history, the well-deserved shame attached to Joe Biden’s deadly and disorderly final withdrawal from Afghanistan will pale in comparison to the shame accruing to our nation as a result of Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine.

Returning now to poetry, still the main focus of this blog, I bought a book the other day which probably won’t be available soon, at least not from the place where I bought it. Furthermore, I bought the book from a person who will very likely be out of work soon.

The name of the book was ‘AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: An Anthology, 1773 – 1927′. I bought the book from a park ranger – a lower-level federal employee – at Fort Pulaski National Monument near Savannah, Georgia. I expect the book will be viewed by the zealots attempting to shape our national mindset as a sop to DEI. Oh, the horror! I bought the book from a federal park ranger at the Fort Pulaski National Monument, and lower-level federal employees are losing their jobs left and right. Elon’s wunderkinds, on the other hand, are sitting fat and happy.

This simple poem – just three quatrains with a simple rhyme scheme – still stops me dead in my tracks every time I read it. I first read this poem in an African American Literature class at Eastern Michigan University about 30 years ago. I’m grateful that my studies spanned an era when such classes were available; I see a time coming when that will not be the case.

INCIDENT (Countee Cullen, 1903-1946)

Once riding in old Baltimore,   
   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,   
I saw a Baltimorean
   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
   And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
   From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
   That’s all that I remember.

A final note . . . I am putting my political thoughts here – rather than on Facebook – because readers must make a deliberate choice to land on this page. On Facebook, you get my thoughts whether you want them or not. God Bless America.

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A New Poem Every So Often.
(No regular schedule right now; life gets in the way.)

Joseph Neely, all rights to original material reserved.