Discussion with Brian Turner - Poet & Veteran

Transcript of Washington Post Discussion
Book World: 'Here, Bullet'
Iraq War Poetry

with Poet and Veteran

Brian Turner

Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere Election Started Today

Voting has started today for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. This is the fourth year the election has been held.

I [ Michael Wells ] was nominated for Stick Poet Superhero, and am on the ballot along with 22 others. Last year over 800 votes were cast for this. The candidate had to have been blogging on poetry for at least a year. You can see all the candidates and cast your vote by going to this site

We Missed - Broadside

My Second Annual Poetry Month broadside is still available.... email me with name and address to receive a copy.

Poetry news bits...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Dirda who writes for the Washington Post on books, literature and the likes, talks about staying power of Contemporary Poetry.

Louisiana Poet Laureate Darrell Bourque travels the state making a tough sell to young people.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Hass sheds new light on a world of relationships.

I'm still sending out my Poetry Month broadsides on request. Received the following kind note this week from a recipient:

Your broadside arrived safely. It's absolutely lovely! Your graceful poem
and the image of the coffee cup stain marry perfectly. Thank you so
much!

Saturday Night

A little writing today. Read quite a few poems. Sketched something tonight. Yes, as in drawing. I amused myself.

Local Poetry Sceen

The Writers Place here in Kansas City has a new director - Anne Calvert Bettis. Congratulations Anne on your new position.

A few upcoming events:

Sunday April 20th - Poets at Large - featuring a panel of experts discussing the Beat writers and their influence on later writers. Starts @ 2:00p.m. followed by an open mic @5:00p.m. Anyone can sign up to read a poem by a Beat poet or a poem inspired by a Beat writer.

Monday April 28th 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. is the Writers Place Open Mic hosted by Sharon Eiker from

Executions Around the World

Amnesty International announced the annual totals for executions by country in 2007 yesterday. These figures in many instances are estimates and actual numbers are likely higher. A link to the report and specifics about the data can be found here.

The Top Five Countries are:

• China 470+
• Iran 317+
• Saudi Arabia 143+
• Pakistan 135+
• USA 45

It should be noted that the number of U.S. executions last year had been slowed by pending court action before the U.S. Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the use specifically of a type of lethal injection used by many states. The majority opinion of the court ruled today in favor of this type of execution which will likely put many executions on a fast track in the U.S.

China will be the focus of a lot of attention with respect to crackdown on dissidents in China and Tibet. China is known for harsh sentences where protests are concerned. The upcoming Olympics has placed China under a spotlight and it appears that China is tightening the flow of news in and out of the country.

In many instances the issue with capital punishment is not limited to the moral question of state ordered executions, but in many cases it goes as well to the fairness of their system of justice since there is no means of correcting errors.

Journal Snippets

I've not posted many snippets from my journal lately, and I suppose that can be attributed to the fact that you've seen a lot of my drafts for NaPoWriNo. I thought I'd see what I can pull out that has not already been posted.

• Towering above my earliest memories of the city/ grand beacon and vertical point of reference / scraping the sky / occasionally the top swallowed by clouds
• Disfigured dairy / yellow glacier / sliding across the plate / victim of global warming / localized
• A reconfigured Rene Zellwelger / thumped in the head / and some Carly Simon concussion of a song / splitting it apart / there's nothing "so vain" going on here.

New Math?

I've read from time to time people making comparisons between poetry and mathematics, which on the surface seems so totally unlikely. To me personally, I've never been proficient in math with anything beyond the basics and don't find it interesting at all. So naturally, such comparisons don't seem to fit for me. In addition, I see math as very static, poetry as any art, seems to defy such description. So when I come across this quote, I am especially amused: The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Fell off the NaPoWriMo Wagon

I did it.... I'm confessing and hopping to climb back on. My daughter and her new fiance flew in to town Thursday evening and just left to go back to Arizona this afternoon. It was our first time meeting Derek. Of course if Meghan had been alone it too would have been distracting from poetry. I'm not complaining. I'm glad we had the time with them. I'm just saying that a poem draft a day was not going to survive this event.

So there, I'm bad. I've failed. And now I've gotten it off my chest. Tomorrow is a new day and I'm ready to get going again.

Day 10: My NaPoWriMo blog released from the grips of bloger at last

A spiked presence—

Before my eyes
A star with supplementary credentials
Far more prickly a presence

A perverse way of making points
And overload of opinion
Not at all shy of expression

The tentacles of the nucleus
Of radiant light
Obliquely insane

Day 9 ~ Accessorizing

Accessorizing

The shuffle of shoes—
Black pumps, red sling backs;
The ruffle of the lips—
Earth tone hikers and aqua fluff flops…
Just a few stepping out
Across my mind.

A casual tennis shoe—
You need several colors
To accessorize; if you know what I mean.

I pity women in third would countries.
I mean when you only have a single pair
You’re so limited with your wardrobe.

Poetry CD Give-A-Way

Check out the blog - Best Words in Their Best Order

Day 8 - Untitled draft

Untitled

Uncorked and non-confrontational
An evening slumping gingerly
Into shades of melancholy
Befriends me and embraces
The many reasons lacking interest
In commitment to any plans tonight.

A hum of snow on TV
And nothing else in particular.
The phone may or may not have rang

Earlier. I was settled into the nights dip.
My hand has held the stem of crystal
But nothing else has required my energy.
A sip on occasion. A hint of pear and oak.
Buttery perhaps, if you say so,
I don’t recall—

There is a presence stronger than I—
Inescapable.

Even in a night of solitude
I am not without the presence of old age.
A shadowy figure that is at a distant
But not too much so
And he maintains a horizontal view
Of the future.

Blogger, McCain, Iraq, et al

I'm not posting my day 8 NaPoWriMo draft poem yet.... because it has yet to be drafted, but we are at day 8 of the month and blogger still has my NaPoWriMo blog (created just for this April project) hostage because "I may be in Violation." Somehow, I think this should like make me feel dirty or something. I don't. In fact I'm feeling really pissed. I wake up each morning and it's starting to feel like it's dragging on into.... gee I don't know, the same place the Iraq war is going- infinity.

There, now see what you did blogger? You got me started on the war. And speaking of the war, the military top brass will be up on the hill today to update us on the current situation in Iraq.

Here in Kansas City, Sen. John McCain delivered a speech on Iraq. ABC World News said last night McCain "accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton today of a failure of leadership for promising to withdraw US forces from Iraq." McCain "told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that promising withdrawal from Iraq without considering the consequences is in his words, 'the height of irresponsibility.'" NBC Nightly News said McCain "delivered a glass-half-full message about progress in Iraq." McCain was shown saying, "We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat. And we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."

This brings me to the question I'd like McCain to answer. Exactly would "success" in Iraq look like. It's interesting that both McCain and the Bush Administration have dropped the term, "victory" that has been used for so long. We were told over and over the Democrats wanted to "lose" the war and the Republicans wanted to "win" it. When pushed to describe what a "victory" or "win" in Iraq would constitute rather than define that elusive term, they have now chosen the term success. It question remains. What would success in Iraq look like. What would be the benchmark that we could look at and say, yes, we are there? The fact of the matter is McCain can't look the American people in the face and tell us what it is because he hasn't figured it out himself.

Because he can't define it, he can only use evasive terms about the future. We are suppose to accept that because there was a downward turn in violence during the surge, "we're closer". Closer to when and What?
The violence has picked up. It's Iraqi against Iraqi violence and America in right in the middle. Now they want to freeze troop levels at pre-invasion levels. Our military presence has weakened our readiness for American defense elsewhere.

There are serious questions aside from the obvious Military ones. None of the massive expenditures on this war are part of any budget. For five years we have waged a grossly expensive military operation on credit. $12 billion a month is what it's costing presently, and that is not including costs to benefits and medical care for returning veterans that will be continuing for many years. When we are asking ourselves, are we safer because of this war? I think we have to ask, what the cost to our security is if we are economically crippled because of it?

Meanwhile, a related breaking story of interest: Draft agreement could allow US troops to remain in Iraq 'indefinitely'

Oh, and how about the special Pulitzer for Bob Dylan, citing the mark he has made on our culture over decades. Isn't that an interesting bit of news?

Day 7 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

In Your Head

Allowed into your imagination
I wandered, surveying foreign landscape
It was one of your shadow boxed thought
That informed my view of how you saw me.

There was a frightening simplicity to your organization.
Everyone you had ever met or hopped to catalogued
Into the Dewey Decimal System.
There I found your own self image scantily riveting.

Poetry News

Few news items:

• Book Slut interviews Galway Kinnell
• Poets Jayne Jaudon Ferrer and Terri McCord talk about the value and image of poetry today
• Raymond Danowski donated his poetry collection (what many scholars believe to be the most important collection of English-language poetry in the world) to Emory University

And this interesting quote from Wallace Stevens:

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Primitive Instincts

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. ~Robinson Jeffers

Day 6 - Split

Split

Blue eyeliner
Lowered in sadness
Told just enough
To know he left
Again
The details
Were insignificant

Day 5 - My Death

My Death

My death was timeless.
It also was not anticipated
In the way one expects high humidity
On a hot summer afternoon
After a thunderstorm passed through.

Oh, I am sure some predicted it
Would come sooner later.
There are after all, those who believe
The Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Such people may be discounted
Either for their connection with the occult
Or because they have suffered concussions at some point.
Betting people would do well to stay clear of them.

The newspaper back in my little pea pod home town
Called my demise unfortunate
Due to the loss suffered by my insurance company.

Folks mostly went about their routine the day of my funeral
And the general store ran a special
On cigarettes and beer.
There are those who called me a good man
When they checked out.

Poetry Month Broadside

My second annual limited poetry broadside has arrived today and is available (as mentioned earlier) as long as they last. To request one, email me with name and address.

Happy Poetry Month!

Day 4 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

The Act

A sacrificial smile
A few seconds worth
Of monitored misconception

I can be convincingly contrived
To the point of melodrama
Candy red and sugar dripping

My baseline convalescing
Beneath ornamentation
Awaiting the moment you leave

This two-faced act steps out on a tight rope
Several times a day it will balance and defy gravity
For your benefit alone
Without applause

Day 3 / Untitled

Sleep was a causality of morning
A most unholy beam of light through the window
Spotlight to my face—
Caught in the cross hairs

Of another morning of demands
Tethered to someone’s aspirations
That are at best a no deposit bottle to me



(note - blogger is being a major pain and has my site specifically for NaPoWriMo under review and I am therefor locked out of it. sigh...)

Day Two of NaPoWriMo

Rage

Opened, a red blossom of anger
Long held in a tight fisted bud;
Too long—

Maybe it was annoyance once.
Irritation came and settled it its belly
And churned with the callous lies

Than ate at me like fire ants.
Irritation became causality
Of the spectacle of “awe” over Baghdad.

Like remnants of lives
Severed, charred and strewn about
Irritation could not survive.

The fury with which our own
Came home in boxes
Became the rage in full bloom today.

You talked about political capital,
Suspended habeas corpus,
Mortgaged future generations.

The audacity of
Mission Accomplished

Some cool links

Day two of National Poetry Month / NaPoWriMo ~ thought I'd share a couple of good resources I've seen from blogs I read.

First off, there are some excellent poetry writing prompts furnished by Kelli at First Draft.

Then Ivy has some cool things and Poetry.org has 30 ideas to celebrate Poetry Month.

And a poetry thought offered in this quote: It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. ~Stephen Mallarme

Happy reading and writing!

2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere

Almost forgot.... Nominations begin today for the 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere. This will be the fourth year for the elections. There are some minimal qualifications - such as having been a poetry blogger for no less than one year as of March 1, 2008. Anyway, the nominations can be made at this site.

National Poetry Month

It's here! Now you have a legitimate reason to torture your friends and family with poetry for a whole month.

A couple of housekeeping notes to start the month off with....

• As previously acknowledged - I will be participating in NaPoWriMo (writing a poem a day all month long) and you will be able to see these here with each one added as the month progresses. Do understand these are one day wonders or perhaps blunders as the case may be and are not polished works.
• I will not be doing the annual poetry quotation email that I have offered for several years now.
• I will however for the second year be offering a Poetry Month broadside of one of my previously published poems that is on nice card stock and suitable for framing. These are available in a limited quantity for to those who request them, until they are all gone. There are only 100 printed. If you would like one, email me.

That's all for now. May everyone's month be touched in some positive way by poetry.

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

For Poetry Month - Why not take A Daily Dose of Poetry

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. ~Jean Cocteau

Baseball's Back

Today.... the World is All About Baseball!

Opening day for most teams.... My team of choice, The San Francisco Giants open on the road in LA against their nemeses the Dodgers. Some see baseball as a seven month diversion from life. I see it the same way I do poetry, a great reflection of life. Play Ball!!! Go Giants!!!

Good day for writing....

It's been cold, damp and overcast to the point of boredom with the outside so it's a good day to write. So far so good. Reserving judgement on what I've produced thus far but I'm happy to report that I have not had trouble starting or to keep going.

Yesterday, wife and I ran around doing some shopping and ate BBQ. Last night I watched the first Indy race of the season and worked on a word list in preparation for today. I'm going to take a bit of a break from the writing though to catch up on some chores, then come back to it.

Poetry Month Is Nearly Here!

Yes, I realize most of us who are poetry aficionados have a circle of friends and family who simply do not share the same sensual pleasures we derive from the act of writing and or reading of poetry. To those poor souls, poetry month seems like an eternity in hell. But isn't that the point of it all? Was poetry month not created with their discomfort in mind?

If poetry month is all about us... the ones for whom a line from Dickinson will bring a twinkle to their eyes, who do not cringe at metaphor or run from personification, and actually get an uplifted feeling reading Plath; then what pray tell is the point? Is that not preaching to the choir?

No, Poetry Month is for the unenlightened. Therefore, it is our responsibility to make the most of the 30 days of April to bring poetry to the masses. Look at it like you have some communicable decease you are just dying to share with the world. You must expose everyone!

Ideas for poetry month!

1. Insert short poems in note cards and stick them in your child's lunch box/bag before sending them off to school.
2. Change your voicemail greeting to a short poem.
3. Write a love poem to your spouse on the bathroom mirror with lipstick.... of if you are not that bold, tape it there on a sheet of paper.
4. Keep a number of short poems on cards in your pocket and hand them to friends you run into throughout the day.
5. Leave a poetry book in some public place to be read.
6. Get drunk and call old friends at 3:00 a.m. and read them poems. ( Just kidding, I couldn't resist adding this)
7. Insert poems on note cards with your bills before mailing them off.
8. In the memo on your check suggest a good poem to read. ( example: Read "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda.
9. Add a short poem to your tag line or signature on your e-mail so everyone you communicate with gets that poem all month long.
10. Write a poem on your sidewalk with chalk.
11. Leave poems on note cards in books you return to the library.
12. Read a poem aloud at dinner time.
13. Post a favorite poem on the office bulletin board.
14. Send a poem on a postcard to someone you owe a letter to. (remember snail mail?)

Once poetry month is over, it is just possible that you may have started a pandemic. Probably not, but at least you tried.

Poet Laureate of the Blogisphere and other things...

Thanks to Jilly, I caught this note on the 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Click on the link to see details about nominations, etc. Last year I didn't catch it until nominations were over, but I did make it in time to vote. Previous winners:

Amy King, Ron Silliman, and Jilly Dybka.




On another note..... China Resists Human Rights Link to Olympics

By Sam Beattie Beijing - 27 March 2008

China hosts its first-ever Olympic Games, in just five months. In Beijing, people are working hard to clean up the city and to get ready to host the world's most prestigious sporting event. The city has undergone enormous changes in the seven-year build-up to the event, but human rights activists say the government has failed to live up to some Olympic promises. Sam Beattie reports. Full Story

Good, Bad and Ugly

Is it that time again? NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month is but days away. A time when those who participate in this ritual will pen a poem every day. When engaged in such practice, I can assure you that there will be some really bad material written. But just as practice makes perfect, the odds are that if you write thirty poems, there will be some keepers. At at the very least, some bits and pieces of verse that can be recycled into something more meaningful.

It's been my experience in the past tho find this practice a bit intimidating because you write for three or four days and look at what you have and it can be pretty unsettling if you are one who pushes yourself for perfection or as I tend to do, become that ugly critic of my own work. In spit of knowing at the onset that in most instances, for me to achieve a single poem I am happy with, I will besides the first draft, rewrite the thing many times over the course of weeks or months when I say I am writing a poem every day, I still want to feel that I've in fact written a poem that has some value.

I think for this purpose, I will establish another blog specifically for the NaPoWriMo poems. That way I can feel comfortable with the disclaimer that what is there, is both the good and the bad . Recognizing this is different from my normal writing process is important to me even if no one sees what I write. I will link the new site here for those who are brave enough to venture into these perhaps murky waters.

Poets Against The War Anthology

Last night was our bi-weekly meeting of K.C. Metro Verse - a local chapter of the Missouri State Poetry Society. I did not take much of my own to read, but chose to read three selections from Poets Against The War.

My selections were:

1. Of a Forgetful Sea by Kelli Russell Agodon
2. Freedom From Speech by Terry Tempest Williams
3. On A Photograph of a Severed Hand by Jim Shugrue

I was taken by the number of poets my own age who were anthologized in this book. I recall seeing a seventeen year old, s few 20's and 30 somethings, but it is amazing the number that are my age. Men and women who were part of the Vietnam generation. There are a lot of profoundly committed voices that experienced the tragedy of our misadventure in southeast Asia and continue to be guided by the wisdom they acquired through that experience. Unfortunately we were lead into Iraq by those who failed to learn from the mistakes made in the 1960's.

Nature

Nature

Light rains on stones
Moss hides in the northern shadows
A trickle of assembled wetness tears up
Rolling down the rocks of solitude
The air in our midst circulated
By Sunday morning church fans
We pause to applaud
And continue on

Awakening

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

~Carl Jung

When the name Naomi Shihab Nye comes up at one of the meetings of our local chapter of the Missouri Poetry Society, eyes around the room generally light up. In fact there is quite possibly no other living poet who invokes such universal positive response. Oh we all have our favorites and what I like, another may not be so fond of. I think most of us have at one time or another seen Ney in person and the gentle qualities of this woman are remarkably contagious.

Ney is a person who is not only at peace with herself, she is at peace with the world. She describes herself as a wandering poet and she has traveled extensively. She has ties to Missouri but most recently has been living in Texas where she works with children in elementary schools. Her heritage is a mixture American and Middle Eastern ancestry, which brings a unique perspective to her view of the world and her writing as well.

Regis Behe writing in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article relates how Nye sees her mission as allowing everyone to experience poetry and to counter the myth that it is elitist or the province of intellectuals. She wants others to awaken their own poetry and to remember language can be very sustaining even when you feel very alone.

Anniversary

Anniversary

The odometer of fallen, rolls onward
Over too familiar terrain.
A merry-go-round insanity
Propelled by stubborn indignity,
Denials-
Capitulating nothing
While eating our young.

Recommended Reading

Dana Guthrie Martin is one of those people who's simply magical in her word choices. She has a poem in the latest Boxcar Poetry Review.

Another poet I have come to appreciate recently is Jayne Pupek and she's in Stirring this issue.

With that, I'll serve up a W. S. Merwin quote, since he is yet another poet I that elicits strong feelings:

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all!

The rain falls steady this morning on the downtown Kansas City area and is forecast to for much of the day. The Irish community in this town hosts on of the three biggest St. Patrick's Day parades in the United States so obviously one must wonder what the wee-little green people did this year to upset the Mother Nature.
Still, it takes a lot more than rain to dampen the Irish on this day. Hell, after a few beers, many won't even know they are wet.

And with that, I close with a couple of thoughts for this great green day....

• "Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat." -- Alex Levine
• "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." -- Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)

Another Journal Bites the Dust

Sunday evening and I am bemoaning the near end of the weekend. I think mostly because last week seemed like five Mondays in a row. I anticipate this week being pretty busy too It seems my caseload at work has risen with no consideration for my already significant commitments. There should be laws against such things.

Oh, before I forget... Happy Birthday to Ivy - She's 34 according to her own account. My God, I barely remember 34.

There are lots of sirens very nearby - I presume by both the sound and the numbers they are fire trucks. We don't hear them out here as often as back in the city. Certainly not a cluster of so many at once. Certainly makes one pause with some prayerful thoughts. The dogs too seem unnerved by the sound.

I am about to finish filling up yet another journal. This latest one was started on September 29th, 2007 and having only like two pages left, I'll likely finish this one off yet tonight. I was looking back at some of my work in the previous journal recently. It always seems to feel a bit peculiar looking at things you've written in the past. Since many of my drafts start in their crudest form in the journal before subsequent revisions make it to the computer it can be an eye opener sometimes reading these things. You just have to wonder where your mind was sometimes.

My side bar so badly needs changes. For one thing, the blog listings is so outdated. There are several on there I used to read but don't any longer because... well, mostly because some of them haven't been updated since middle of last year. It's time for those to come down. Also, there are a few more worthwhile blogs that I try to catch on s somewhat routine basis. Also, if you have linked to Stickpoet and I've not reciprocated, drop me a note so you can be added.

I'll close tonight with these words from John Steinbeck... "I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."

Looking for Genius?

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

~ E. B. White

Pointless Query

Braking
through the layers

past
linen wrap

percolating pulp
without

reason or
necessity

till exposure
it answers.

Household Diplomacy

Every night, whisper "peace" in your husband's ear. ~ Andrei A. Gromyko

Daylight Savings Crime

So Saturday night an hour was stolen from me. Now I get up before the butt crack of dawn as opposed to at it. By the way, powers that be, ( you know who you are)- Check out the Indiana study that suggests this is both more costly and not a savings on energy consumption.

I've disliked this from the very early days when no one really talked much about energy consumption - but tauted it for such things as allowing more daylight hours for extra curricular activities in the evening and how this was safer. Never mind the fact that most of those events were well supervised by adults, while we stood on dark street corners waiting on the bus in the morning. Go figure.

Unknowingly

Unknowingly

I saw the sand bottom out
in the egg timer. There were no eggs
or time involved. Just an end to something
arbitrary- or was that in fact time?

Did it end of its own accord, or
because I turned the hourglass
and started a process unknowingly?

How many unknowings can there be in one day?

Poetry News

A few poetry items:

• John Ashbery Reads at Haverford (story)
• Robert Frost's Dartmouth Lectures Published (story)
• ‘Living In Storms. Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic Depression’ (review)
• Ezra Pound's birthplace in central Idaho draws poetry pilgrims (story)
• Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet and Essayist W.S. Merwin to Lead All-Star Cast at 2008 The Kenan Writers' Encounters 'Earth: Writers and Artists Engage the Environment' April 12-22, 2008 (information)

Thumbs Down

The end of the Bush Administration can hardly come fast enough. Even as it seem there is a light visible through this dark 8 year long tunnel, this one man continues to trash the reputation of this nation as a moral example to the rest of the world. His veto this weekend of the Congressional bill banning waterboarding as an interrogation method only continues erosion of U.S. credibility on human rights.

Check these out...

It's Friday, and while I like to take my Friday evenings a little on the lighter side, especially after a challenging week, I read a remarkably powerful poem by Jilly title Poem By an American. Needless to say, it's not on the lighter side. She acknowledges she may not be finished with it, but it is well worth reading. It's really quite different from anything of her's that I've read.

Also, Aleah Sato has poetry up at k a l e i d o w h i r l - winter 2008 edition. Her work is generally well worth a read.

The Endorsement

Here we have George "W" Bush and the GOP Presidential nominee for 2008 John S. (W, II) McCain.

What McCain brings to the table is a slightly more effective version of the same disastrous Bush policies. There is not much more to say.