The speaker in Auden’s “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen” is a man of certain age, warning listeners that what he is about to spew is doggerel. But the claim is made in ironic jest; what the “doggerelist” is about to spew is the bitter truth, or at least in his humble opinion, about societal progress.
Introduction with Text from “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen”
By ironically jesting that his utterance will be only a bit of doggerel, the speaker in W. H. Auden’s “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen” lightens any blame he may receive, or any pushback against his views. The views and the biting criticism remain perfectly in line with the poet’s views as expressed in his utterly serious works, such as “The Unknown Citizen.”
Doggerel by a Senior Citizen
Our earth in 1969 Is not the planet I call mine, The world, I mean, that gives me strength To hold off chaos at arm’s length.
My Eden landscapes and their climes Are constructs from Edwardian times, When bath-rooms took up lots of space, And, before eating, one said Grace.
The automobile, the aeroplane, Are useful gadgets, but profane: The enginry of which I dream Is moved by water or by steam.
Reason requires that I approve The light-bulb which I cannot love: To me more reverence-commanding A fish-tail burner on the landing.
My family ghosts I fought and routed, Their values, though, I never doubted: I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic Both practical and sympathetic.
When couples played or sang duets, It was immoral to have debts: I shall continue till I die To pay in cash for what I buy.
The Book of Common Prayer we knew Was that of 1662: Though with-it sermons may be well, Liturgical reforms are hell.
Sex was of course — it always is — The most enticing of mysteries, But news-stands did not then supply Manichean pornography.
Then Speech was mannerly, an Art, Like learning not to belch or fart: I cannot settle which is worse, The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.
Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith, Who dig the symbol and the myth: I count myself a man of letters Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.
Dare any call Permissiveness An educational success? Saner those class-rooms which I sat in, Compelled to study Greek and Latin.
Though I suspect the term is crap, There is a Generation Gap, Who is to blame? Those, old or young, Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.
But Love, at least, is not a state Either en vogue or out-of-date, And I’ve true friends, I will allow, To talk and eat with here and now.
Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just As a sworn citizen who must Skirmish with it that I feel Most at home with what is Real.
Commentary on “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen”
Claiming to be offering a piece of doggerel, this speaker/senior-citizen offers his personal evaluation about what things are like in the year 1969.
First Movement: A Different Planet from Yesteryear
Our earth in 1969 Is not the planet I call mine, The world, I mean, that gives me strength To hold off chaos at arm’s length.
My Eden landscapes and their climes Are constructs from Edwardian times, When bath-rooms took up lots of space, And, before eating, one said Grace.
The speaker begins by alerting his listeners that he is reporting from the year 1969, and he then makes clear through a bit of exaggeration that the earth no longer represents the same “planet” upon which he had formerly existed. This new “earth” “planet” “world” has become a place of mayhem, and the disorder is so bad that he has difficulty keeping it at bay or out of his own life.
The speaker suggests that his own preference is for the Edwardian age [1], a period of prosperity and especially important in the areas of fashion and art. The speaker hints that religion was still a central feature in the family, as they said “Grace” before dining.
The speaker makes it clear that for him those times were “[his] Eden”—likely he does mean prelapsarian Eden [2]. He employs the rest of his discourse to show how the times in which he is now living can be considered quite postlapsarian [3]
Second Movement: Nostalgia Outsmarts Novelty
The automobile, the aeroplane, Are useful gadgets, but profane: The enginry of which I dream Is moved by water or by steam.
Reason requires that I approve The light-bulb which I cannot love: To me more reverence-commanding A fish-tail burner on the landing.
The speaker refers to the common inventions of the day, calling the mode of travel by car and plane “useful” but “profane.” He still longs for the steam engine and old-timey wind sailing.
Although he feels that he is likely required to accept used of the “light-bulb,” he cannot bring himself to “love” the object. He prefers the gaslight resembling a fish tail, which resulted from two gas jets spewing through two holes that fanned out and formed the fish tail shaped flame. Nostalgia often overcomes efficacy when it comes to every-day useful appliances.
Third Movement: From the Work Ethic to Debt Accumulation
My family ghosts I fought and routed, Their values, though, I never doubted: I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic Both practical and sympathetic.
When couples played or sang duets, It was immoral to have debts: I shall continue till I die To pay in cash for what I buy.
The speaker has overcome the idiosyncrasies of family life, coming to love those whom he had earlier found unpleasant; he has, however, always accepted the basic moral rectitude of those family members. They adhered to the “Protestant Work-Ethic,” which the speaker has always deemed practical and proper.
Back during the time when party entertainment often consisted of “couples [playing or singing] duets,” the society deemed acquiring debt an immoral act. The speaker assures his listener that to his dying day he will continue to accept that societal feature and continue to pay “in cash for what I buy.”
Fourth Movement: The Weakness of Liturgical Reforms
The Book of Common Prayer we knew Was that of 1662: Though with-it sermons may be well, Liturgical reforms are hell.
Sex was of course — it always is — The most enticing of mysteries, But news-stands did not then supply Manichean pornography.
The speaker remembers that before certain religious reforms a “Book of Common Prayer” held sway, and it dated all the way back to 1662, during the era of the Restoration of King Charles II [4].
Religious reformation always comes about through controversy. Those who have become accustomed to certain practices of worship distain any change and thus argue against “liturgical reforms” [5]. This speaker has already placed his likely position on such reforms; he naturally comes down solidly on the side against them, labeling such actions “hell.”
The speaker then cites “sex,” which is always engulfed in “mysteries,” as an example of one phase of life that has suffered because of “liturgical reforms”: the obnoxious duality of “Manichean pornography” now sits on “news-stands,” whereas in the more modest past, such sights would not have been tolerated.
Fifth Movement: The Problem with Language Study
Then Speech was mannerly, an Art, Like learning not to belch or fart: I cannot settle which is worse, The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.
Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith, Who dig the symbol and the myth: I count myself a man of letters Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.
The speaker now tackles “Speech,” the art of the word, the use of letters that creates literary art. But first he delves into the vulgar act of belching or farting, which along with the “mannerly” use of language, would not be acceptable. Children would then learn to avoid the grossness involved in such human effusions.
The speaker says he has not decided which art form is more vile: “the Anti-Novel” or “Free Verse.” The proliferation of those holding doctoral degrees, particularly the Ph.D., does not impress this speaker; he finds this who revel in “myth” and “symbol” hold little interest for him.
He contrasts himself with those book-learned fellows: he assures his listeners that he himself is “a man of letters.” But instead of trying to appeal to the vulgar, profane masses, he strives to compose for “his betters.” He remains a bit humble in his claim by inserting “or hopes to.”
Sixth Movement: Lack of Discipline
Dare any call Permissiveness An educational success? Saner those class-rooms which I sat in, Compelled to study Greek and Latin.
Though I suspect the term is crap, There is a Generation Gap, Who is to blame? Those, old or young, Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.
The speaker then refers to permissiveness as the bane of success in education. He finds the old-fashioned disciplines focusing on learning “Greek and Latin” to be a much “saner” focus for the classroom. He was such a student and now feels he has benefited for the rigor of such study of language.
Mentioning the buzz-phrase of the late sixties “Generation Gap,” he says its likely a worthless expression, even though he does detect that such a thing exists. But he wonders who is to blame for it? Is the the “old or young”? But then he answers his question by asserting that both are to blame, that is, those who refuse to learn “their Mother-Tongue.”
Seventh Movement: Love and Reality
But Love, at least, is not a state Either en vogue or out-of-date, And I’ve true friends, I will allow, To talk and eat with here and now.
Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just As a sworn citizen who must Skirmish with it that I feel Most at home with what is Real.
The speaker concludes with some uplifting thoughts: love, for example, never goes out of style, and he retains good friends with whom he can pleasantly dine and converse.
He seems to reject the notion that he might feel “alienated,” but he does suggest that the loosening of societal mores causes him to “skirmish” with it all. He insists that he feels most comfortable with “what is Real.” He does not equivocate with what he thinks that reality entails; he has just laid it all out in his piece of “doggerel.”
Climate change alarmist Al Gore joked to his publisher that W. B. Yeats had penned the so-called poem “One thin September soon” in Gore’s latest book; sadly, the publisher seemed to fall for it, before Gore admitted to scribbling it.
Introduction with Text of “One thin September soon”
The former vice-president’s untitled piece appears in his book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, which purportedly offers the antidote to “global warming.” Al Gore’s untitled verse is chopped up into seven three-line sets, which may charitably be labeled tercets.
In this farcical piece of doggerel, the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) fanatic has his speaker pontificate from the position of a shepherd, who is crying to the world about the impending doom that human mankind is bringing on the world through the use of fossil fuels.
Through his many pontifications and written tracts on the politically fabricated issue of global warming, the former failed presidential candidate shows that he fancies himself a kind of modern-day John-the-Baptist crying in the wilderness, which is growing hotter and drier year after year, despite the fact that there has been no “warming” since the mid-1990s [1].
And now temperatures have actually started to cool [2], according to official NASA global temperature data.
Never mind the inconvenient facts, Gore heralds his speaker to bark loudly about the concocted problem and to offer his saintly wisdom in his untitled “poem”—wonder when Gore will publish a collection of his poetry. Likely, never. It seems that the political gasbag has penned only one “poem” which barely qualifies as doggerel.
One thin September soon
One thin September soon A floating continent disappears In midnight sun
Vapors rise as Fever settles on an acid sea Neptune’s bones dissolve
Snow glides from the mountain Ice fathers floods for a season A hard rain comes quickly
Then dirt is parched Kindling is placed in the forest For the lightning’s celebration
Unknown creatures Take their leave, unmourned Horsemen ready their stirrups
Passion seeks heroes and friends The bell of the city On the hill is rung
The shepherd cries The hour of choosing has arrived Here are your tools
Supposedly well read in scientific literature, climate alarmist Al Gore gets the science of the Earth wrong as he has his speaker claim to be “crying in the wilderness” like some modern day John-the-Climate-Change-Baptist.
First Tercet: Beginning with a Fantasy
One thin September soon A floating continent disappears In midnight sun
Gore’s speaker begins his piece by asserting that soon one of these Septembers—and it will be a “thin” September, not like the usual thick Septembers—the midnight sun will embrace the disappearance of a continent that floats.
This first assertion presents several problems:
it must be referring only to the continents at the Earth’s extreme north and south;
floating continents [3] exist only in fantasy [4],
he has to be referring to Antarctica because the Arctic is not a continent at all;
the midnight sun refers to a phenomenon that occurs in summer at each pole when the sun does not set.
For the midnight sun reference, the speaker has to be referring to the non-continent Arctic because he names the month of September. There is midnight sun in the first three weeks of September at the North Pole but not at the South, whose summer is from December 22 to March 21.
This confusion of poles gets the verse off to an inauspicious start.
On the one hand, the reader might remember that the composer of this pigswill is a man who is supposedly steeped in scientific studies in support of his global warming theory; yet, he engages a non-scientific fantasy and confuses the facts regarding activities at the Earth’s poles.
On the other hand, if one considers Gore’s academic accomplishment in the study of science —”According to his Harvard transcript, he earned a D in natural science his sophomore year”—[5], his error-prone nonsense makes perfect sense.
Second Tercet: The Conundrum of Postmodern Claptrap
Vapors rise as Fever settles on an acid sea Neptune’s bones dissolve
According to global warming proponents, ocean waters are becoming acidic because of the lethal effects that the warming is having on various sea creatures, including coral and urchins. Gore’s speaker refers to these sea creatures as Neptune’s bones that are dissolving.
The absurd conflation of the bones of a mythological god and sea creatures bends the piece to the frowziness of postmodernism, where nothing matters because nothing makes sense anyway. Yet this man of hard science wants to influence politicians and governments to make policies that will affect all citizens worldwide.
Third Tercet: A Pile of Images
Snow glides from the mountain Ice fathers floods for a season A hard rain comes quickly
Because of the warming, snows begin to loosen and slide down mountains while melting ice gluts the ocean, and then the rains begin, those horrid rains! And they are “hard” [6] rains—recall that other noted poetaster/plagiarist Bob Dylan [7].
The politician-cum-poetaster then makes those three claims of the melting that the earth is enduring: all obviously caused by the heat, all slapped together without punctuation or conjunction, possibly because everything is happening almost simultaneously. As the snow and ice suddenly become a hard rain, the reader might then suspect the prompt need of an ark.
Fourth Tercet: As Lightning Celebrates
Then dirt is parched Kindling is placed in the forest For the lightning’s celebration
However, the next scene takes the reader to dry land where dirt is parched, and out of the blue, someone has placed small slips of wood in a forest where lightning can catch them to flame as it celebrates.
The doggerelist does not reveal who placed that “[k]indling” in the forest so that lightning could set it aflame for its celebration. Why, one might wonder, would lightning be “celebrating” anyway? But by now the gentle reader has become aware that taking anything in this piece seriously is a fool’s errand.
Fifth Tercet: Getting Ready for the Apocalypse
Unknown creatures Take their leave, unmourned Horsemen ready their stirrups
There are many species of animals on Antarctica, but Gore’s speaker chooses to claim that they are unknown as they “[t]ake their leave.” It seems that such a situation would merit some drama, instead of the faint, euphemistic “take their leave.”
But then they are unmourned. He, no doubt, would at least have them be mourned, despite their being unknown. Perhaps the most bizarre and useless line in the entire piece is, “Horsemen ready their stirrups.” There seems to be no reason for that line, for it connects to nothing.
And if the bizarre notion of an allusion to the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” springs to mind, it will offer no resolution of any kind. The Book of Revelation has suffered many absurd interpretations, and if Gore’s speaker is attempting to add another, it results in the lamest of the lame.
Sixth Tercet: A Gorean City on the Hill
Passion seeks heroes and friends The bell of the city On the hill is rung
The brave shepherd is passionately seeking others who will help him get his message out, that the earth is becoming a scorched, iceless dustbowl with the oceans rising. The speaker/shepherd now credits himself for ringing that all important bell in that all important place—that “city / On the hill.” The solipsism of this piece is nausea invoking.
Could the city on the hill be that same place to which President Ronald Reagan [8] referred?
A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.
It is likely that Gore’s speaker does, in fact, refer to that same place, but for very different reasons, for the policies thus far suggested to stop global warming would stifle the individualism and freedom of all world citizens, especially those in Third-World nations.
Seventh Tercet: The Shepherd Handing Over the Tools
The shepherd cries The hour of choosing has arrived Here are your tools
In the final three-line set, Gore’s speaker reports that he, as this good crying shepherd, is telling his listeners that the time for action is at hand, and he has hereby come to hand to them all the tools they need.
This self-important, junk-science spewing “shepherd” is offering in his new book the necessary “tools” that his sheep will need as they waddle with him down this fantastical path to an Earth-saving global temperature. Whatever that is?
(Please note: On Amazon, Fredrick P. Wilson, in his comment, “Ugly, Economically Disastrous, Green Choices,” offers a useful review of Gore’s book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.)
Sources
[1] Prof. Don J. Easterbrook. “Global Cooling is Here.” Global Research. November 2, 2008.
William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely misunderstood poems of the 20th century. Many scholars and critics have failed to criticize the exaggeration in the first stanza and the absurd metaphor in the second stanza, which render a potentially fine poem a critical failure.
Introduction with Text of “The Second Coming”
Poems, in order to communicate, must be as logical as the purpose and content require. For example, if the poet wishes to comment on or criticize an issue, he must adhere to physical facts in his poetic drama. If the poet wishes to emote, equivocate, or demonstrate the chaotic nature of his cosmic thinking, he may legitimately do so without much seeming sense.
For example, Robert Bly’s lines—”Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand / Reaches out and pulls him in” / / “The pond was lonely, or needed / Calcium, bones would do,”—are ludicrous [1] on every level. Even if one explicates the speaker’s personifying the pond, the lines remain absurd, at least in part because if a person needs calcium, grabbing the bones of another human being will not take care of that deficiency.
The absurdity of a lake needing “calcium” should be abundantly clear on its face. Nevertheless, the image of the lake grabbing a man may ultimately be accepted as the funny nonsense that it is. William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” cannot be dismissed so easily; while the Yeats poem does not depict the universe as totally chaotic, it does bemoan that fact that events seem to be leading society to armageddon.
The absurdity surrounding the metaphor of the “rough beast” in the Yeats poem renders the musing on world events without practical substance.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Commentary on “The Second Coming”
William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely anthologized poems in world literature. Yet its hyperbole in the first stanza and ludicrous “rough beast” metaphor in the second stanza result in a blur of unworkable speculation.
First Stanza: Sorrowful over Chaos
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The speaker is sorrowing over the chaos of world events that have left in their wake many dead people. Clashes of groups of ideologues have wreaked havoc, and much blood shed has smeared the tranquil lives of innocent people who wish to live quiet, productive lives.
The speaker likens the seemingly out of control situation of society to a falconer losing control of the falcon as he attempts to tame it. Everyday life has become chaotic as corrupt governments have spurred revolutions. Lack of respect for leadership has left a vacuum which is filled with force and violence.
The overstated claim that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” should have alerted the poet that he needed to rinse out the generic hyperbole in favor of more accuracy on the world stage.
Such a blanket, unqualified statement, especially in a poem, lacks the ring of truth: it simply cannot be true that the “best lack all conviction.” Surely, some the best still retain some level of conviction, or else improvement could never be expected.
It also cannot be true that all the worst are passionate; some of the worst are likely not passionate at all but remain sycophantic, indifferent followers. Any reader should be wary of such all-inclusive, absolutist statements in both prose and poetry.
Anytime a writer subsumes an entirety with the terms “all,” “none,” “everything,” “everyone,” “always,” or “never,” the reader should question the statement for its accuracy. All too often such terms are signals for stereotypes, which produce the same inaccuracy as groupthink.
Second Stanza: What Revelation?
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The idea of “some revelation” leads the speaker to the mythological second coming of Christ. So he speculates on what a second coming might entail. However, instead of “Christ,” the speaker conjures the notion that an Egyptian-Sphinx-like character with ill-intent might arrive instead.
Therefore, in place of a second coming of godliness and virtue, as is the purpose of the original second coming, the speaker wonders: what if the actual second coming will be more like an Anti-Christ? What if all this chaos of bloodshed and disarray has been brought on by the opposite of Christian virtue?
Postmodern Absurdity and the “Rough Beast”
The “rough beast” in Yeats’ “The Second Coming” is an aberration of imagination, not a viable symbol for what Yeats’ speaker thought he was achieving in his critique of culture. If, as the postmodernists contend, there is no order [2] in the universe and nothing really makes any sense anyway, then it becomes perfectly fine to write nonsense.
Because this poet is a contemporary of modernism but not postmodernism [3], William Butler Yeats’ poetry and poetics do not quite devolve to the level of postmodern angst that blankets everything with the nonsensical. Yet, his manifesto titled A Vision is, undoubtedly, one of the contributing factors to that line of meretricious ideology.
Hazarding a Guess Can Be Hazardous
The first stanza of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” begins by metaphorically comparing a falconer losing control of the falcon to nations and governments losing control because of the current world disorder, in which “[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
Political factions employ these lines against their opposition during the time in which their opposition is in power, as they spew forth praise for their own order that somehow magically appears with their taking the seat of power.
The poem has been co-opted by the political class so often that Dorian Lynskey, overviewing the poem in his essay, “‘Things fall apart’: the Apocalyptic Appeal of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming,” writes, “There was apparently no geopolitical drama to which it could not be applied” [4].
The second stanza dramatizes the speaker’s musing about a revelation that has popped into his head, and he likens that revelation to the second coming of Christ; however, this time the coming, he speculates, may be something much different.
The speaker does not know what the second coming will herald, but he does not mind hazarding a dramatic guess about the possibility. Thus, he guesses that the entity of a new “second coming” would likely be something that resembles the Egyptian sphinx; it would not be the return of the Christ with the return of virtue but perhaps its opposite—vice.
The speaker concludes his guess with an allusion to the birth of such an entity as he likens the Blessed Virgin Mother to the “rough beast.” The Blessèd Virgin Mother, as a newfangled, postmodern creature, will be “slouching toward Bethlehem” because that is the location to which the first coming came.
The allusion to “Bethlehem” functions solely as a vague juxtaposition to the phrase “second coming” in hopes that the reader will make the connection that the first coming and the second coming may have something in common. The speaker speculates that at this very moment wherein the speaker is doing his speculation some “rough beast” might be pregnant with the creature of the “second coming.”
And as the time arrives for the creature to be born, the rough beast will go “slouching” towards its lair to give birth to this “second coming” creature: “its hour come round at last” refers to the rough beast being in labor.
The Flaw of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”
The speaker then poses the nonsensical question: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” In order to make the case that the speaker wishes to make, these last two lines should be restructured in one of two ways:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to give birth?
or
And what rough beast’s babe, its time come at last, Is in transport to Bethlehem to be born?
An unborn being cannot “slouch” toward a destination. The pregnant mother of the unborn being can “slouch” toward a destination. But the speaker is not contemplating the nature of the rough beast’s mother; he is contemplating the nature of the rough beast itself.
The speaker does not suggest that the literal Sphinx will travel to Bethlehem. He is merely implying that a Sphinx-like creature might resemble the creature of the second coming. Once an individual has discounted the return of Jesus the Christ as a literal or even spiritual fact, one might offer personal speculation about just what a second coming would look like.
It is doubtful that anyone would argue that the poem is dramatizing a literal birth, rather than a spiritual or metaphorical one. It is also unreasonable to argue that the speaker of this poem—or Yeats for that matter—thought that the second coming actually referred to the Sphinx. A ridiculous image develops from the fabrication of the Sphinx moving toward Bethlehem. Yeats was more prudent than that.
Exaggerated Importance of Poem
William Butler Yeats composed a manifesto to display his worldview and poetics titled A Vision, in which he set down certain tenets of his thoughts on poetry, creativity, and world history. Although seemingly taken quite seriously by some Yeatsian scholars, A Vision is of little value in understanding either meaning in poetry or the meaning of the world, particularly in terms of historical events.
An important example of Yeats’ misunderstanding of world cycles is his explanation of the cyclical nature of history, exemplified with what he called “gyres” (pronounced with a hard “g.”) Two particular points in the Yeatsian explanation demonstrate the fallacy of his thinking:
In his diagram, Yeats set the position of the gyres inaccurately; they should not be intersecting but instead one should rest one on top of the other: cycles shrink and enlarge in scope; they do not overlap, as they would have to do if the Yeatsian model were accurate.
Image : Gyres – Inaccurate Configuration from A Vision
Image: Gyres – Accurate Configuration
2. In the traditional Second Coming, Christ is figured to come again but as an adult, not as in infant as is implied in Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”
Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet. And most problematic is that the rough beast is “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.” The question is, how can such a creature be slouching if it has not yet been born? There is no indication the speaker wishes to attribute this second coming fiasco to the mother of the rough beast.
This illogical event is never mentioned by critics who seem to accept the slouching as a possible occurrence. On this score, it seems critics and scholars have lent the poem an unusually wide and encompassing poetic license.
The Accurate Meaning of the Second Coming
Paramahansa Yogananda has explained in depth the original, spiritual meaning of the phrase “the second coming”[5] which does not signify the literal coming again of Jesus the Christ, but the spiritual awakening of each individual soul to its Divine Nature through the Christ Consciousness.
Paramahansa Yogananda summarizes his two volume work The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You:
In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth . . .
A thousand Christs sent to earth would not redeem its people unless they themselves become Christlike by purifying and expanding their individual consciousness to receive therein the second coming of the Christ Consciousness, as was manifested in Jesus . . .
Contact with this Consciousness, experienced in the ever new joy of meditation, will be the real second coming of Christ—and it will take place right in the devotee’s own consciousness. (my emphasis added)
Interestingly, knowledge of the meaning of that phrase “the second coming” as explained by Paramahansa Yogananda renders unnecessary the musings of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”and most other speculation about the subject. Still, the poem as an artifact of 20th century thinking remains an important object for study.
In his poem, “The Hill Maiden,” Malcolm M. Sedam has created a speaker voicing cheerful vaticination that his teenage angst-ridden protégé will one day shed her nihilism and burst into life affirming joy. The best teachers are those who can inspire as well as instruct their students. This poem represents a stellar example of that kind of inspirational educator.
Introduction and Text of “The Hill Maiden”
Malcolm M. Sedam‘s “The Hill Maiden” features a teacher dramatizing his observations about a particularly inquisitive but melancholy student. His ultimate purpose is to instill in the student the notion that she will ultimately be able to appreciate the life that she seems to disdain.
The poem plays out in three movements of unrimed stanzas. This organization allows the speaker to touch lightly on the physical reality of the subject but then move more intensely to the mental and finally the spiritual possibility of the subject’s inclinations.
Because the speaker can only infer certain facts about his student, the poem remains metaphorically and imagistically implicative instead of unequivocally literal. For example, the teacher has no exact idea what the student does at her home; thus he places her in an image of “moving among the phantom rocks of reverie.”
The teacher/speaker knows from the negativity the student has been expressing to him that she mentally resides among hardness that causes her to imagine that things are worse than they are.
Mentally she travels like a rocket through her ghostly musings until night fall when she sleeps but likely gets little rest, accounting for the nervous, brittle energy the educator perceives in his young scholar.
Likely the adolescent girl is simply suffering the turbulence of teenage angst through which most individuals of that age group must travel. But the best, most effective teachers are those who can inspire as well as instruct their students. This poem represents a stellar example of that kind of inspirational educator.
As an educator, Mr. Malcolm M. Sedam wrote poems to many of his students, always with the goal of inspiring them to high thinking and plain living. Mr. Sedam once said he felt that his function as an educator was “to kick the dirt off of his students.” By that he meant to help them see life more clearly without the fog of stereotypes, prejudice, and provincialism.
The Hill Maiden
(for Linda, over in the valley)
She is moving among the phantom Rocks of reverie hurtling through By mind bringing days into darkness Where the pull of growth rings The heart and spurs the soul
Where her wish strings questions In the mysterious night of snow Bringing a promise that only the hills can sing. Her smile waits behind a frown of swords That rend her days
In the melancholy of the deep valley Of dreams where she lives among flowers Gathering her moods that may bring peace Once the sorrow of lonely distance Has closed on hands—
The same hands that Zen-like reach To answer each knock at the door of her heart Broken to be mended by tender time. Her mind is speeding through a galaxy Of intensity where the blood rose
Will speak to her frozen will All forgiven by decree in warring winds— The nature of her plight? Without wings She will still spring into flight.
Commentary on “The Hill Maiden”
Malcolm M. Sedam’s “The Hill Maiden” features a teacher, who is also a practicing poet, dramatizing his observance of an inquisitively intelligent but extremely melancholy student.
His only purpose is to instill in the student the notion that she will ultimately be able to appreciate the life that she seems now to disdain.
First Movement: Dreaming amongst the Hills
She is moving among the phantom Rocks of reverie hurtling through By mind bringing days into darkness Where the pull of growth rings The heart and spurs the soul
Where her wish strings questions In the mysterious night of snow Bringing a promise that only the hills can sing.
The speaker begins by placing the object of his speculative musing in an image that implies sharp but dream-like rigidity. Rocks appear ghost-like through a dream-scape as they bewilder the mental musings of the young girl with whom the mature educator is engaging both as a poetry mentor as well as a teacher.
Teachers often counsel their students who seek out their advice and direction even in issues outside of the academic sphere as well as within the educational arena. Those teachers who must essentially become counselors will either direct the students to other professionals, or they will attempt to offer their own gleanings from their life experience.
The teacher in this poem demonstrates that he is the latter kind of teacher, and he has given the mind of the young student some serious analysis. Thus he not only describes her environment, but he also speculates and then foreshadows what is likely to befall the girl once she is able to erase her current adolescent fog.
Until that glowing day arrives, however, the speaker sees that the girl’s maturing process weighs heavily on her heart and soul. She is full of questions brought on by the mystery of life.
The “snow” that brings beauty as it covers the hills also brings bitter cold and slippery conditions the cause the girl to miss the music that her hill-valley home affords her.
By pointing out these images of beauty and placing them a context of mystery and difficulty, the speaker hopes to allow his charge to contemplate the possibility that life is real and offers hope to those who search its reaches with an open mind and cheerful heart.
Second Movement: Frowning Swords
Her smile waits behind a frown of swords That rend her days
In the melancholy of the deep valley Of dreams where she lives among flowers Gathering her moods that may bring peace Once the sorrow of lonely distance Has closed on hands—
The same hands that Zen-like reach To answer each knock at the door of her heart Broken to be mended by tender time.
The speaker has observed the teen’s unwillingness to show a cheerful countenance. Her bitterness “behind a frown of swords” likely often gives the mentor a shudder at the likelihood that the girl is suffering intensely.
No doubt, he believes that at this point in her life, she should be dancing merrily among “flowers” and allowing her sorrowful moods to dissolve in the “deep valley of dreams.”
But again, he returns to prognostication that once she has learned to fold her hands in wonder and listen to the love that knocks at the “door of her heart,” her melancholy will be rendered null and void as “tender time” moves her through the rough spots of her anguish.
Again, the speaker chooses beauty—”flowers gathering”—to balance the “frown.” He offers the image of the heart’s door to harmonize with the environment that will reach her with the “Zen-like” hands of mystery and the ultimate gain-of-wisdom.
Like a Zen koan, the riddle of life will remain before her as she continues to search for answers to her perplexing questions.
Third Movement: Springing into Flight
Her mind is speeding through a galaxy Of intensity where the blood rose
Will speak to her frozen will All forgiven by decree in warring winds— The nature of her plight? Without wings She will still spring into flight.
Finally, the speaker makes his most striking vaticination after asserting that his young charge has a strong mind but also a tender heart that is quick to show intense emotion.
That the “blood rose” will speak itself undeniably to the girl’s will portends that all of her negativity and nihilism will be “forgiven” as she continues to navigate through the conflicts that life bestows on all searching souls.
Then the speaker offers the question that he is likely very content to answer. The frustrating situation that befuddles the young scholar’s mind and heart has been implied by all the imagery that went before, but then what will eventually be the path chosen by and/or for the student?
She will be able to navigate through all the trials and tribulations as a bird that so easily lifts it wings to the wind and takes to the air through the abundant space of sky.
The speaker is not so naïve as to insist that such navigation will come easily, but he does remain assured that the path will open to the girl, and she will become willing to follow it. Thus the speaker can conclude affirmatively that “Without wings, she will still spring into flight.”
Offered by a beloved and well-respected mentor, such faith in a young scholar’s ability to navigate life is bound to redound in blessings, despite the pitfalls and rough spots that her life, no doubt, will place sphinx-life before her mind and heart.
In addition to his piece titled “Pop,” Barack Obama also published in Occidental college’s literary magazine, Feast, the short piece titled “Underground,” featuring a fantasy in which fig-eating apes breathe underwater, while dancing and tumbling about.
Introduction and Text of “Underground”
At age 19, Barack Hussein Obama II published in Occidental college’s literary magazine, Feast, two “poems.” A piece titled “Pop,” in which he explores the relationship between a young man and a father figure, and this short piece titled “Underground,” which reveals a fantasy world where fig-eating apes breathe underwater, while dancing and tumbling in rushing water.
Just as Obama’s piece of doggerel “Pop” does not bode well for a potential writer of any stripe, the future U. S. President’s [1] poetic effort, “Underground,” offers further evidence that this hack scribbler will retain no place in letters, while the brilliance with which the former Oval Office Occupier handled the falling off of the presidential seal further demonstrates that his talent lay in areas of entertainment, not governance..
The title, “Underground,” indicates a location under the land, and it could also be indicating metaphorically some event or transaction not open to public scrutiny or awareness: an example might be a secret network similar to the Underground Railroad. However, no such meaning can be gleaned from this mass of confused doggerel.
Underground
Under water grottos, caverns Filled with apes That eat figs. Stepping on the figs That the apes Eat, they crunch. The apes howl, bare Their fangs, dance, Tumble in the Rushing water, Musty, wet pelts
Commentary on “Underground”
This three-pronged failure demonstrates even more clearly than the effort titled “Pop” that this scribbler has no place in letters. It fails for three significant reasons: (1) misuse of grammar/diction, (2) awkward enjambment, and (3) lack of meaning.
First Movement: Underground, Underwater?
Under water grottos, caverns Filled with apes That eat figs.
The first line—”Under water grottos, caverns”— indicates that the setting for the activity is not “underground,” but, in fact, it is underwater. While the preferred spelling for the plural of “grotto” is “grottoes,” such an amateurish error is minor compared to the repetition of the similar terms, grotto and cavern.
There is a difference in the denotative meanings of those two terms: grotto can be man-made and decorative while cavern is natural. Immediately, the bumbling speaker had befuddled the reader by employing those two terms, which because of their different meanings imply different connotations. Is the cave decorated by human beings or is it not? Is it a “grotto” or a “cavern”? It cannot be both.
Those underwater caves, which may or may not be decorated, are teeming with land-dwelling, mammals who naturally breathe air, yet here they are—living and thus obviously breathing under water. The piece then perhaps becomes a verse of surreal fantasy. In any case, the reader must, at this point, suspend belief in order to continue, learning about those animals—”apes” that eat figs.
This fact is nothing out of the ordinary, because apes do love fruit, but why the versifier chooses to employ “figs” must remain a mystery. No speculation can approach a satisfactory answer, and the context offers no clue.
Second Movement: Figs Stepping on Figs
Stepping on the figs That the apes Eat, they crunch.
In this three-line assertion, the misplaced modifier jumbles the message—who steps on the figs? It would appear that the apes would be doing so because no one else with feet appears in the grotto.
Following an introductory gerund clause—in this case, “stepping on the figs”—the subject of the main clause must be the actor in the introductory clause. Thus, the subject of the introductory gerund clause, “they,” has to be the figs because it follows immediately the introductory gerund clause.
Because it is absurd to think that even an amateur would be stating such an impossible occurrence—that the figs are stepping on themselves—the reader becomes aware of the grammatical error called misplaced modifier. As Jack Cashill [2] has pointed out, Obama has been consistent in misapplying grammatical constructions including but not limited to bringing his subjects and verbs into alignment.
Furthermore, word choice in poems is vital, and the writer’s choices in this poem offer nothing but speculation to the reader. That flaw hinders meaning. There seems to be no clear reason for choosing figs over any other fruit. And that the speaker claims that the figs “crunch” remains nonsensical. Figs are soft and pliable; even dried figs would not “crunch” if stepped on. Thus, not only is the choice of figs questionable; it is also unfeasible.
Third Movement: Maddened by Crunching Figs
The apes howl, bare Their fangs, dance
It now seems that the “crunch” sound inflames the apes so that they start to “howl” and “bare their fangs” as they “dance.” The only reason for the ape-dance is that someone stepped on figs and made them crunch or so one would guess.
Is the ape excitement motivated by anger or is it urged on to gladness by the crunching of their figs? Such amateurish discourse demonstrates the lack of control in composing meaningful a piece that communicate clearly. Ultimately, this kind of nonsense communicates nothing but does clearly reveal the lack of ability of the composer.
Fourth Movement: Awkward Enjambment
Tumble in the Rushing water, Musty, wet pelts Glistening in the blue.
As mentioned in the commentary on “Pop,” often a sign of an amateur poet is a line ending with “the”: “Tumble in the / Rushing water.” The frivolous diversion of this awkward enjambment distracts from the list of activities engaged in by the apes after their figs were stepped on.
The reader will want to like the apes and want to know what they are doing and why they are doing it, but the confused grammar, lack of poetic control, and awkward phrasing demonstrates by the would-be poet obliterates any hope of a clear reading.
The reader may summarize the activities of the apes by quoting four lines: the apes “howl, bare / Their fangs, dance, / Tumble in the / Rushing water.” They do all of these things while their “[m]usty, wet pelts / [are] Glistening in the blue.”
It remains ambiguous as to what “blue” refers: it would seem to be the water, but the scant amount of light peeping into the underwater cave would allow only enough to render the water’s color to appear black. This confusion offers further evidence that this amateur poetaster had little control of his thoughts and his language arsenal. It becomes especially galling that the poet could not even realize the nature of light and how it operates to illuminate color.
Ungrammatical, Awkward, Meaningless
This piece of doggerel, “Underground,” fails for three significant reasons: (1) misuse of grammar/diction, (2) awkward enjambment, but most importantly, (3) lack of meaning.
The apes could be charming, even endearing with their figs and their musty pelts, but the reader concludes the visit with them, baffled by the awkward execution of the piece, having no idea what has just transpired in these lines.
Readers might wonder what they might have communicated in the hands of a genuine poet, instead of in the hands of immature hack whose lack of a literary sensibility has misused them.
Such confusion fostered by this poem offers further evidence that this poetaster had little control over his thoughts and the instruments in his poetry toolkit. Nay, it remains quite likely he possessed no poetry toolkit at all.
“There is a price to be paid for criticizing Obama.” —Jack Cashill
Barack Obama’s “Pop”
In Barack Obama’s “Pop,” the speaker is sketching what appears to be a father-figure—likely Frank Marshall Davis—and offering a glimpse into the relationship between the two. Obama called his maternal grandfather “Gramps,” rendering it unlikely that the father-figure in this poem is Stanley Dunham.
Introduction with Text of “Pop”
The spring 1981 issue of Feast, Occidental College’s literary magazine, published two poems, “Pop” and “Underground,” by erstwhile literary prodigy Barack Obama. According to Jack Cashill, long-time researcher of Obama’s literary efforts, Obama’s writings [1] suffer from, “awkward sentence structure, inappropriate word choice, a weakness for clichés,” and “the continued failure to get verbs and nouns to agree.”
Obama’s poems suffer from similar language indignities but also include further issues relevant to poems, such a faulty line breaks, confusing mixed metaphors, and inappropriate use of surrealist images.
Although readers can forgive a 19-year old for adolescent scribblings in non-sense, especially in poems published in a college lit mag, what they cannot do is discern that this particular adolescent was showing any potential to produce a future writer.
Likely, the future, and now former, occupier of the Oval Office could have become a capable interpretive reader, and it is possible that Barack Obama would have served more admirably as an actor [2] than writer or president.
Barack Obama possesses a unique charm that could have been employed in creative ways, if he had kept his focus on the humanities and entertainment fields instead of politics and government. The Obama administration, tainted by incompetence and corruption [3], has altered the American political landscape more intensely than any other in American history.
For this misdirection, Barack Obama is less to blame than his handlers, beginning with political American terrorist Bill Ayers, continuing with political hacks David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.
His coterie of political advisors steered him in a direction that has enriched Obama and that coterie financially, instead of enriching society in a humanitarian field of endeavor. The former president’s piece titled “Pop” consists of one 45-line versagraph [4]. The piece’s awkward, postmodern codswallop represents much of what is despicable and destructive in most postmodern art.
Pop
Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pass. I listen, nod, Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Beige T-shirt, yelling, Yelling in his ears, that hang With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling His joke, so I ask why He’s so unhappy, to which he replies… But I don’t care anymore, cause He took too damn long, and from Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face To mine, as he grows small, A spot in my brain, something That may be squeezed out, like a Watermelon seed between Two fingers. Pop takes another shot, neat, Points out the same amber Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and Makes me smell his smell, coming From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem He wrote before his mother died, Stands, shouts, and asks For a hug, as I shink, my Arms barely reaching around His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause I see my face, framed within Pop’s black-framed glasses And know he’s laughing too.
Commentary on “Pop”
The man addressed in Obama’s “Pop” is likely Frank Marshall Davis, long thought to be Obama’s biological father [5]. Barry called his Grandfather Dunham “Gramps” [6], not “Pop.”
First Movement: Sheltered Young Man
Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pass.
The speaker places his father-figure in his usual chair where the latter is watching television, enjoying his “Seagrams, neat.” The man, called Pop, begins accosting the young man by flinging at him a rhetorical question: “What to do with me?”
The speaker asserts that Pop thinks his young charge is just a “green young man / Who fails to consider the / Flim and flam of the world.”
Pop counsels the young man that the latter’s sheltered existence is responsible for the young man’s failure to recognize the “flim-flam” world. The speaker then stares at the old man, who exhibits a facial tick, while his eyes dart off “in different directions / And his slow, unwelcome twitches.”
Frank Marshall Davis Is “Pop”
While many reviewers of this poem have interpreted Pop to be Stanley Armour Dunham, the maternal grandfather who raised Obama, the former president’s hagiographer, David Maraniss, in his biography, Barack Obama: The Story, reveals that the poem “Pop” focuses on Frank Marshall Davis [7], not Stanley Armour Dunham.
And the details of the poem all point to the truth of that revelation.That Obama’s grandfather, who raised him, would be addressing such an issue with his young charge is untenable. If the boy is incapable of considering the “flim-flam” of the world, whose fault would that be? It would be the person who raised the kid.
Obama’s relationship with Frank Marshall Davis, however, provides the appropriate station for such a topic of conversation. Davis took it upon himself to help the young Obama see the world through the lens of a black man in America.
Again, if “things have been easy for” the young Barry, it has been the grandfather who made them easy; thus, for the grandfather to be accosting the boy for that supposed flaw would be absurd.
Obama’s grandfather introduced the boy to Davis for the purpose of providing Barry with the advice of an older man who had lived the life of a black man in America. The Dunhams were heavily invested in identity politics as likely members of the Communist Party, as was card carrying member, Frank Marshall Davis [8].
The grandfather was of the inclination that he could never guide a young black boy in certain areas but that Davis could. Whether that sensibility is accurate or not is the topic for another day, but the topic being discussed by the speaker of this poem precludes the poem’s addressing Obama’s white grandfather.
Faulty Line Breaks
Many of the bad line breaks [9] in the poem demonstrate the amateurish nature of the poetaster, who makes the rookie flaw of ending several lines with the definite article “the.”
About Obama’s use of line breaks, poet Ian McMillan sarcastically observes [10]: “Barack likes his line breaks, his enjambments: let’s end a line with ‘broken’ and start it with ‘in’ just because we can!”
Second Movement: Surrealistic Encounter
I listen, nod, Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Beige T-shirt, yelling, Yelling in his ears, that hang With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling His joke, so I ask why He’s so unhappy, to which he replies… But I don’t care anymore, cause He took too damn long, and from Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face To mine, as he grows small, A spot in my brain, something That may be squeezed out, like a Watermelon seed between Two fingers.
The speaker then employs a surrealistic style as he continues to describe his encounter with Pop.
The speaker listens politely, nodding occasionally, as the old man declaims, but suddenly the speaker is “cling[ing] to the old man’s “[b]eige T-shirt, yelling / Yelling in his ears.” Those ears have “heavy lobes,” and the old man is “still telling / His joke.” But the speaker then asks Pop, “why / He’s so unhappy.”
Pop starts to respond, but the speaker does not “care anymore, cause / He took too damn long.” The speaker then pulls out a mirror from under his seat.
The confusion here mounts because the speaker had just claimed he was clinging to Pop’s shirt and yelling in the old man’s ear, which would have taken the speaker out of his seat. This confusion adds to the surreal nature of the episode.
After pulling out the mirror, the speaker asserts that he is “laughing, / Laughing loud.” What he does with the mirror is never made clear. But during his outbreak of laughter, Pop “grows small” shrinking to a “spot in [the speaker’s] brain.”
That tiny spot, however, “may be squeezed out, like a / Watermelon seed between / Two fingers.” This shrunken seed image of the speaker’s pop implies a level of disrespect that is quite breathtaking as it suggests that the speaker would like to eliminate Pop from his mind.
Third Movement: Smelling the Stain
Pop takes another shot, neat, Points out the same amber Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and Makes me smell his smell, coming From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem He wrote before his mother died, Stands, shouts, and asks For a hug, as I shink, my Arms barely reaching around His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause I see my face, framed within Pop’s black-framed glasses And know he’s laughing too.
The speaker observes that Pop “takes another shot, neat,” but he probably means that the old man took another sip; it is not likely that the father-figure is measuring out each swig with a shot glass.
With this swig, Pop “points out the same amber / Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and / Makes me smell his smell, coming / From me.” During the exchange, while clinging to Pop’s shirt, the speaker has stained Pop’s shorts.
And Pop wants the speaker to realize his blame for the stain. At least, that’s one way to interpret the smelling the stain scene.
Others have inferred a sexual reference in the “smelling” scene, but that requires too much of a stretch, that is, a reading into the text what is not there and not implied.
Pop then changes TV channels and “recites an old poem / He wrote before his mother died.” He then rises from his seat, “shouts, and asks / For a hug.”
The younger man realizes his smallness in comparison to the size of Pop: “my / Arms barely reaching around / His thick, oily neck, and his broad back.” But the speaker sees himself reflected in Pop’s “black-framed glasses.” And now Pop is “laughing too.”
The reference to a poem written before Pop’s mother died also eliminates Grandfather Dunham as “Pop.” Dunham was only eight years old, when he discovered the body of his mother who had committed suicide.
The notion that an aged man would be quoting a poem that he wrote before he was eight years old is patently absurd. Plus there is no evidence that Grandfather Dunham ever wrote any poetry, while Frank is famously known as a poet, as well as his other endeavors in political activism and pornography.
“Shink” Is Obviously a Typo and “Know” Is Likely “Now”
Much has been made of the obvious typo in the line, “For a hug, as I shink, my.” The word is obviously “shrink.” Pop had shrunk to the size of a watermelon seed a few lines earlier, and now the speaker shrinks as he realizes how much smaller he is than Pop.
It is quite possible that in the last line “know” is an additional typo, for the word “now” would be more appropriate. It would be nonsensical for the speaker to say he “knows” Pop is laughing when he is right there looking into his face. But it makes sense for him to report that during the hug Pop also begins to laugh.
Interestingly, the editors of the New York Times quietly corrected the “shink” to “shrink” when they published the poems on May 18, 2008, in an article under the title, “The Poetry of Barack Obama [11]”. The editors did not correct the obvious error “know” for “now” in the last line.
Sources
[1]Jack Kerwick. Jack Cashill’sDeconstructing Obama. American Thinker. February 25, 2011.
This commentary on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” offers an alternative reading to the sycophantic interpretation given by postmodernists who subscribe to the prevailing ideology of victimhood. The curse of identity politics soft censors such stances; thus they remain rare.
Introduction with Text of “Southern Cop”
While the speaker in Sterling Brown’s “Southern Cop” seems to be exposing and rebuking racism, he actually engages in racism himself. This widely anthologized poem features the following scene: A rookie cop named Ty Kendricks has shot a man who was running out of an alley.
The poem does not report the reason that the man was running nor the reason that the police officer happened to be at the scene. However, the report clearly states that the man’s reason for running was not because of any guilt on his part. It is useful to keep in mind that the caveat stating that one is innocent until proven guilty applies to all citizens—even those who are running.
The speaker of the poem purports to represent the outraged citizenry, whose emotional reaction is so powerful that the speaker must turn to verbal irony in order to convey that outrage. The outraged speaker assumes that his audience is as offended as he is and thus will agree with his statements on all levels.
But the speaker also assumes that a racist audience will take him literally, even though brushing away the irony would demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of his intentionally ludicrous exhortations. The ideas that because Ty Kendricks was a rookie in the process of proving himself and that the citizenry should decorate him for shooting an innocent man cannot be taken literally.
The ideas of proving manhood and decorating a cop for shooting an innocent man are clearly absurd. The ideas are absolutely preposterous, yet the speaker does not suggest the course of action society should take in dealing with Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop, who likely made a mistake, without consideration of the race of the victim.
What does this rookie cop deserve? Who is to decide? An angry, disorderly mob? The speaker’s emotion becomes magnified with each stanza from the first line of the first stanza that would appear not to be ironic at all but quite literal to the first line of the last stanza that is undoubtedly filled with irony.
About half-way through the poem the irony becomes obvious. And the speaker then sets center stage his ironic barbs in his effusion.
Southern Cop
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot.
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Commentary on “Southern Cop”
This irony-filled drama portrays a bundle of rage and racism. The attitude of the speaker weighs in at least as heavily as the actual event that the speaker is decrying.
Stanza 1: Forgiveness Is Good
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot
The first stanza opens with the speaker seemingly quite controlled as he suggests that he and his milieu “forgive” the young cop named Ty Kendricks. The invocation of the Christian value of forgiveness offers no clue that the speaker would not, in fact, forgive this rookie cop. Of course, the biblical injunction demands that trespassers be forgiven.
However, in this particular scenario, what is the speaker suggesting be forgiven? He is urging forgiveness of Ty Kendricks the rookie cop who shot an man because he was running out of an alley. The speaker does not reveal the reason that the man was running, nor what caused the cop to shoot; the speaker is simply asking that the rookie be forgiven.
Stanza 2: Understanding Is Also a Good Thing
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Next, the speaker asks that he and his listeners “understand” the rookie cop. Of course, they should try to understand both the perpetrators of crime and the enforcers of law. Otherwise, justice cannot prevail without understanding.
But then the speakers’s audience is apprised of what they are being commanded to forgive and to understand: the man was surely dangerous/guilty because he was running. Not only that, the rookie Ty Kendricks now has the opportunity to show himself to be a man.
Because running does not equal guilt, and the notion of proving manhood by shooting someone is ludicrous, it now becomes clear that the speaker is engaging in verbal irony to portray his true message. This speaker does not, in fact, want his audience to forgive nor understand Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop.
What does the speaker hope to accomplish with his use of irony? He intends to brand Ty Kendricks a racist and elicit sympathy for the man shot by this cop. Of course, the man who was shot deserves sympathy, but the speaker offers no evidence that Ty Kendricks was a racist cop.
That fact that Kendricks shot a man running out of an ally does not equal racism, despite the fact that the running man was black. All things being equal, Ty Kendricks would likely have shot any man of any race in this situation.
Stanza 3: Condoning the Killing of an Innocent Man
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Condoning this apparently despicable act of a rookie cop shooting an innocent victim becomes a near surreal request. But because the speaker is engaging in irony, he does not intend his listeners to “condone” but instead to “condemn” the rookie cop.
The cop’s reaction of shooting the running man became just another “unfortunate” event by the time the cop learned the reason for the running. But what is the efficacy of forgiving, condoning, and decorating a cop for a bad shoot?
The ironic use of the terms means that the speaker is in reality suggesting that his listeners continue to hold a grudge and to condemn cops, even those who might have mistakenly shot someone. The intensity of this verbal irony may possibly encourage speculation that the speaker is even attempting to instigate rioting, burning buildings, and killing other cops.
Stanza 4: Pity for All Involved
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Finally, the speaker appears to return to some semblance of humanity, asking that he and his listeners “pity” this poor rookie cop. Of course, the cop deserves pity. Or more accurately, he deserves sympathy and support. Taking the life of a fellow human being causes emotional damage—even to the most well-adjusted veteran law enforcement officer.
And taking a human life constitutes a serious, deeply spiritual offense against Creation and the Creator, even though that Creator has arranged Creation to require such an offense at times. Even man’s law allows for self-defense.
But notice that the speaker is still in his own racist venue, as he applies his final acerbic barb of irony: he does not, in fact, want his audience to pity that rookie cop. Instead, he wants his readers to pity only the family of the deceased man: they stood there crying and moaning the loss of their loved one.
The speaker asks us to pity the rookie only because that rookie has to listen to that crying and moaning. By stating ironically that the pity should apply to Ty Kendricks and contrasting his situation with that of the deceased man and his family, the speaker is implying that any loss suffered by the cop remains negligible.
But suffering cannot be compared and contrasted especially in such a callous way. There is no way of calculating and weighing the suffering on either side: it’s a lose-lose situation.
Ultimately, there is no pity for Kendricks from this speaker and his ilk—only a hollow attempt to portray the cop as a criminal, not simply a human being who has made a mistake.
The Issue of Racism in the Poem
A cursory reading of Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” may result in the assumption of the stereotypical view that cops shoot young black men because they are black. An example of such a reading includes the following:
Sterling A. Brown’s poem “Southern Cop” published in 1936 is an extremely powerful piece of poetry in American history because it cuts at the heart of racism in America. Unfortunately, many of the points Brown makes are still relevant today. In fact, this poem could have been written after any number of recent events, Ferguson perhaps being the most well known, and it would be as pertenant (sic) as ever.[1]
The claim that this poem parallels the situation in “Ferguson” is patently false. The shooting in the poem “Southern Cop” and the shooting in Ferguson have nothing in common. In the “Ferguson” shooting, the race of the cop who shot and the race of the victim are known. In “Southern Cop,” the race of the cop can only be assumed—and then only prejudicially.
The “Hands up, don’t shoot!” claim, following the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by white cop Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, has been debunked repeatedly; yet its basic impetus has refused to be abated [2] [3] [4] [5]. In fact, the only racism discoverable in the poem”Southern Cop” comes from the speaker, who identifies the victim as a “Negro” but does not ever mention the race of the cop who shot the “Negro.”
Because the stereotype of white racist cops, especially southern cops, is so ingrained in the culture, the speaker feels no need to identify the race of Ty Kendricks, who could as likely have been of any race. But because of the assumption that the cop is white, the speaker demonstrates his own racism by his utter contempt; he is deliberately attempting to pit the race of the shooting victim against the race of the shooter.
The speaker demonstrates sympathy only for the “Negro” while he attempts to promote hatred and contempt for the cop.
Before the late 1980s in the United States, the terms “Negro,” “colored,” and “black” were accepted widely in American English parlance.
While the term “Negro” had started to lose it popularity in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that the Reverend Jesse Jackson began insisting that Americans adopt the phrase “African American.” The earlier more accurate terms were the custom at the time that Sterling A. Brown was writing.
Suggestion for Students Writing Papers on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” and Other Sensitive Issues
The following advice applies to students attending most American colleges and universities. Exceptions are Hillsdale College and a few others, where the First Amendment and other constitutional protections are still operative.
The current prevailing societal emphasis on identity and the politics of racial victimhood insures that my critical stance in this commentary is deemed unacceptable and will be at least soft censored, if not completely canceled.
So if you take such a stance in your classes, you are likely to be graded down or even censored—at best. At worst, you may be labeled racist, even expelled.
Therefore, please consider your options when writing on sensitive subjects like this one. Know your professors’ biases and use caution in crossing them.
However, the best outcome is that you are in position to take legal action against those professors who violate your constitutional rights. With such endeavors, I wish you all the best success.
The phenomenon known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has established a pattern of behavior and language applied by the political opposition of President Donald Trump. That outrage arises from ignoring facts or context, leveling unfair criticism, and engaging in melodramatic emotion, wherein calm reasoning is abandoned.
Introduction: Extreme Rhetoric
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has fostered an atmosphere in which contemporary political rhetoric and public discourse operate as fallacious argumentation, in which every statement or action becomes distorted and weaponized.
Political disagreement does not employ discussion, analysis, and explanation regarding policy differences but instead, it operates on disgust and indignation that the opponent even holds differing views.
TDS is often manifested in Trump’s opponents through ad hominem attacks, in which personal slander takes the place of logical argument—substituting name-calling and character assassination for substantive argument.
Trump has been called a Russian puppet, sexual predator, dictator, threat to democracy, racist, white supremacist, convicted felon, traitor, insurrectionist, clown, idiot, nazi, fascist, and the pièce de résistance—Hitler.
Even obvious joking sarcasm when spouted by Trump becomes fodder for re-interpretation and bad-faith reporting. For example, during the presidential election campaign of 2016, when Trump facetiously called on Russia/Putin to find Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails, the following exemplary headline appeared on PBSNews :“Trump asked Russia to find Clinton’s emails. On or around the same day, Russians targeted her accounts,” suggesting that Trump was asking a foreign government to interfere in the election campaign.
In addition to ad hominem attacks, immediate condemnation of any policy issuing out of the Trump administration results in reasoning and careful inquiry being abandoned [1], resulting in the use of the most extreme, heated language.
However, Trump himself is not the only target of this invective; all of those terms and others are applied to his supporters: during the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and during the 2024 campaign, Joe Biden called them “garbage.” Those who oppose Trump, his administration, and his supporters are not simply critical of them; they are obsessed them.
A dangerous mixture of outrage, exaggeration, and hypocrisy involved in attacking Trump has caused TDS sufferers to lack the ability to think clearly about issues. Any idea suggested by Trump is immediately railed against simply because it was suggested by Trump.
The Origin of Trump Derangement Syndrome
The phrase “Trump Derangement Syndrome” did not originate as a clinical diagnosis, although its predecessor “Bush Derangement Syndrome” was coined by the psychiatrist and political analyst Charles Krauthammer, who observed that extreme, irrational reactions to President George W. Bush often went far beyond substantive policy disagreement.
Krauthammer used the term to highlight how emotional fixation and hostility replaced reasoned analysis and proportional criticism. The revival of this concept during Donald Trump’s presidency reflects the same phenomenon, magnified by social media, a 24-hour news cycle, and an increasingly polarized political culture [2].
However much words do matter, Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is more than rhetorical excess; it has real consequences that harm individuals, families, public institutions, and the broader political environment. The following examples illustrate how hyper-emotional fixation on Donald Trump—when divorced from clear reasoning and grounded fact—creates verifiable and dangerous effects on American society:
Escalation to Political Violence
The starkest danger of TDS is that it fuels political violence rather than dissent through words. During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump survived at least two assassination attempts motivated by political hatred and extremism.
The first happened at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, [3] when a gunman shot at Trump, wounding him on his right ear. The gunman killed Corey Comperatore, a rally attendee and former fire chief, who took a bullet protecting his family. The gunman also wounded several other people before being killed by Secret Service.
A second assassination attempt was thwarted by authorities at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida [4]. This perpetrator was arrested, stood trial, and was found guilty of the assassination attempt; he awaits sentencing on February 4, 2026.
Another unmistakable instance of politically motivated violence occurred on September 10, 2025, when Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during a public event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. While speaking at an outdoor gathering, Kirk was struck in the neck by a single bullet fired from a distance, an attack that Utah officials and others characterized as a political assassination [5].
These incidents demonstrate how obsessive political animus can translate into lethal intent, transforming rhetoric into action and endangering not only public figures but bystanders, law enforcement, and the democratic process itself.
Political Polarization Breaking Family Bonds
TDS has also deeply strained familial relationships. In too many households across the country, deep political disagreements have resulted in personal and familial estrangement. A Time magazine feature documented families [6] who stopped speaking entirely during the Trump years, including one case in which a woman was uninvited from Thanksgiving and later cut off from close relatives solely because of her political views related to Donald Trump.
What had once remained ordinary disagreement has hardened into moral condemnation, with ideological choice being prioritized over blood relations. This dynamic tarnishes one of our most cherished and fundamental social units—the family—leaving emotional scars that persist long after the election cycle has passed.
Exploitation of Tragedy for Political Weaponization
Another disturbing example of how TDS has distorted reactions to violent events is evident in public opinion data following the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
In a snap poll conducted shortly after the attack, roughly one‑third of Democrat voters agreed with the statement “I wish Trump’s assassin hadn’t missed”[7]. That such a large proportion of the opposition political party actively wished that an opponent had been killed should place a huge red flag on the issue.
Such sentiments reflect a deeply disturbing willingness to engage in the ultimate violence in addressing political differences. This response illustrates how TDS can override basic empathy and moral restraint, further polarizing discourse and normalizing violent attitudes toward political opponents.
Rejection of Policy on Source Alone
TDS sufferers without thinking oppose any policy regardless of merit simply because it comes from Trump. During his presidency, Trump championed criminal justice reform through the First Step Act, a bipartisan measure that reduced sentences for nonviolent offenders and earned praise from figures like Van Jones [8]. Yet many on of his top opponents dismissed it outright, calling it a sham despite its tangible results in releasing thousands from prison.
Even as they voted for the bill, these congressional member expressed negative criticism of it as too limited, exclusionary, narrow: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
This knee-jerk rejection ignores benefits to real people—mostly minorities—and poisons the well for future bipartisan efforts. The danger lies in discarding proven solutions, leaving societal problems festering while politics trumps progress.
Lawfare Weaponization against Citizens
Mainstream media outlets and Democrat officials, gripped by TDS, have pursued “lawfare” against ordinary Trump supporters, turning legal processes into political retribution.
After the January 6 riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department charged hundreds of nonviolent participants—parents, grandparents, workers, small business owners, some individuals who were not even present at the capitol—with felonies carrying decades in prison, while ignoring similar or worse rioting by groups such as Antifa and BLM [9] .
This selective prosecution creates two tiers of justice: one for Trump opponents who face lenient treatment, another for his supporters treated as domestic terrorists. The danger lies in weaponizing the rule of law itself, eroding equal protection under the Constitution and fostering a climate where citizens fear political expression.
Families lose breadwinners to draconian sentences, communities fracture, and trust in impartial justice evaporates—leaving Americans vulnerable to future authoritarian overreach from any side that may promise a return to fairness under the law [10].
Economic Self-Sabotage through Hysteria
TDS has led opponents to sabotage policies that later prove beneficial [11], harming the economy they claim to champion. Tariffs on China, derided as reckless by TDS critics, pressured Beijing into trade concessions that revitalized American manufacturing jobs in key states. Critics who railed against them without nuance prolonged economic pain for workers.
By prioritizing anti-Trump animus over pragmatic assessment, this mind-set risks national prosperity. It endangers livelihoods when ideology blinds leaders to data-driven gains.
Suppression of Free Speech on Campuses
Universities, which formerly boasted their positions as bastions of open inquiry, have seen TDS manifest as censorship of Trump-related views [12]. Professors and students expressing support for Trump’s policies face shouting-downs, doxxing, low grades, or job threats, as seen in cases at Yale and NYU ,where conservative speakers were mobbed or disinvited.
This kind of unfair discrimination chills intellectual diversity, turning campuses into echo chambers. The danger is profound: it trains a generation to equate disagreement with moral failing, undermining the reasoned debate essential for maintaining a free society.
Foreign Policy Paralysis
TDS hampers coherent foreign policy by fixating on Trump over real threats facing the United States and other nations. While Trump brokered the Abraham Accords [13] normalizing Israel-Arab ties—hailed as historic by many—his opposition fixated on and imaginary “divisiveness,” denigrating and downplaying the breakthrough.
One might recall that the phrase “Abraham Accords” ran noticeably missing during the Biden administration’s four years. Instead of trying to build on the success of those Accords, the Biden administration essentially ignored them, and instead proceeded to cozy up to Iran just as President Barack Obama had done.
So it remains obvious that “The reason for the administration’s hostility to the Abraham Accords goes beyond jealousy or the desire to deny credit to a hated predecessor” [14]. The Biden administration’s reaction to the Abraham Accords demonstrates another blatant example of TDS causing its sufferer to bite off its nose to spite its face. World peace be damned, if Donald Trump has anything to do with it! (my emphasis added)
Such tunnel vision weakens America’s global stance. It allows adversaries like Iran to exploit divisions, endangering allies and U.S. interests when personal hatred eclipses strategic thinking.
Workplace Discrimination against Supporters
TDS has infiltrated some workplaces, where Trump voters have faced bias in hiring or promotions. Recent surveys indicate some hiring managers admit to bias against Trump supporters in hiring and promotions. Reports highlight concerns over social media scrutiny for political views, especially in tech sectors after the 2024 election.
A ResumeBuilder.com poll of over 750 U.S. managers found 1 in 6 less likely to hire Trump supporters, citing poor judgment (76%), lack of empathy (67%), or workplace tension risks (59%) [15]. One in 8 managers are less likely to promote such employees, with similar rationales; some even encourage quits.
Managers often check social media indirectly, as direct bias questions are avoided, amplifying unaddressed discrimination [16]. Post-2024 election, tech firms like Google and Meta tightened internal policies to curb activism, removing political posts and limiting discussions on elections or related symbols.
While no widespread firings for Trump support are documented in these sources, the surveys flag a “concerning trend” of political bias akin to other protected categories, urging HR to enforce objective evaluations. Broader DEI rollbacks under Trump policies (e.g., executive orders in 2025) shifted focus to merit, but hiring biases persist in certain areas.
Cultural Institutions Alienating Half the Nation
Hollywood and elite culture, steeped in TDS, produce content that vilifies Trump supporters as rubes or villains, deepening cultural rifts [17]. Films and shows routinely caricature “MAGA” hats as symbols for bigotry, alienating millions of viewers. This breeds mutual contempt, fracturing national cohesion. When culture wars replace dialogue, shared identity unravels, leaving society brittle and weakened against common challenges.
Tom Hanks played a Trump supporter named Doug on SNL’s “Black Jeopardy” during the 50th anniversary special in February 2025. The character wore a MAGA hat and an American flag shirt, hesitating to shake a black host’s hand, while speaking with a Southern drawl. Critics called it a racist caricature amid Trump’s growing support with black Americans.
In Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17” (2025), a Trump-like politician rallies crowds with “First we survive! Then we thrive!” slogans. Supporters wear red hats, and the figure obsesses over image in a gaudy setup, reducing women to breeders. Even some Reddit users [18] noted it as Hollywood propaganda tying MAGA visuals to bigotry.
These depictions use MAGA hats as symbolic icons for backwardness or hate, alienating everyday Americans. Commentary points to “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in elite content driving rifts between supporters of Trump and his opposition.
Hypocrisy and TDS
One of the clearest markers of Trump Derangement Syndrome is not merely excess emotion, but selective memory—an amnesia that conveniently erases facts that negate the preferred narrative. This hypocrisy is especially evident when examining Donald Trump’s public reputation prior to his decision to run for president as a Republican. That distinction matters: does anyone really believe that if Trump had run for president as a Democrat, he would have received the same level of sustained media hostility and moral outrage, or would his celebrity excesses have been reframed as colorful flaws rather than disqualifying sins?
Before entering politics, Trump was not widely regarded as a pariah or an existential threat to democracy. On the contrary, he was a mainstream celebrity, a frequent guest on talk shows, a fixture in popular culture, and a recognizable brand associated with success and entertainment.
His television program The Apprentice was a major hit [19], running for fourteen seasons and drawing millions of viewers weekly. Trump was welcomed in elite social circles, praised by entertainers, courted by politicians, and treated as a cultural icon rather than a moral monster.
That history poses an uncomfortable question for TDS sufferers: if Trump was allegedly a racist, fascist, authoritarian, or “Hitler” all along, why was he celebrated so enthusiastically for decades [20]? The answer is obvious but rarely admitted—Trump became unacceptable only after he challenged the status quo of entrenched political power.
This hypocrisy is further illustrated by the now‑forgotten fact that Oprah Winfrey [21], one of the most influential cultural figures in America, once raised the prospect of a Trump presidential run on her nationally syndicated show. In a 1988 interview, Winfrey openly entertained the idea by asking Trump whether he would run for president, a notion that drew no negative response from the audience.
At the time, such a notion was not treated as dangerous or absurd, but as intriguing. No cries of impending dictatorship followed. No accusations of fascism emerged. The man has not changed; the political context has.
Similarly revealing is the selective outrage surrounding immigration enforcement. Tom Homan, who later became a senior immigration official under Trump, previously served in the Obama administration [22], where he oversaw large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants.
Under President Obama, deportations reached record levels, earning Obama the nickname “Deporter in Chief” among immigration activists. Yet Homan’s actions under Obama attracted no media hysteria and no moral condemnation.
Once those same policies—and in many cases, the same personnel—were associated with Donald Trump, they were suddenly recast as evidence of cruelty, racism, and authoritarianism [23]. The policy substance remained largely unchanged; only the political association shifted. This double standard exposes the core of TDS: opposition not to ideas or actions, but to the individual himself.
Such contradictions reveal that Trump Derangement Syndrome is propagated not by principle but by animosity. It is not driven by consistent moral reasoning, but by prejudicial hostility that rewrites history to justify present outrage.
When yesterday’s admired celebrity becomes today’s Hitlerian villain, yesterday’s lawful deportations become today’s unconstitutional atrocities, and yesterday’s encouragement becomes today’s horror, the problem is not Trump—it is the inability of his critics to apply standards with balance and proportion.
In this way, hypocrisy is not a side effect of TDS; it is one of its defining features.
Toward Official Recognition of TDS
Taken together, these examples demonstrate that Trump Derangement Syndrome is not a harmless turn of phrase or a bit of political snark; it is a corrosive mind-set with real-world, measurable consequences.
When outrage replaces analysis, disagreement hardens into dehumanization, and fixation eclipses fact, the result is not merely bad manners but real harm—to families torn apart, to public trust in institutions, to free expression, and even to human life.
The pattern remains consistent: an inability or refusal to separate Donald Trump the individual from objective evaluation of policies, principles, and people associated with him. In that environment, reason is not merely sidelined; it is treated with suspicion.
The growing recognition of this phenomenon has moved beyond commentary and into the realm of formal inquiry. The introduction of the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) Research Act of 2025 by Representative Warren Davidson reflects an acknowledgment that the effects described here warrant serious examination rather than reflexive dismissal [24].
Whether one supports Trump or opposes him, a healthy republic depends on the ability to argue without hysteria, to criticize without hatred, and to reject violence, censorship, and collective punishment as political tools.
Ultimately, the danger of TDS lies in what it does to the culture of self-government. A nation cannot remain free if its citizens are trained to see political opponents as enemies to be destroyed rather than fellow Americans to be debated. Reclaiming proportion, restraint, and reason is not a concession to Donald Trump; it is a necessity for the survival of civil society itself.
Anne Frank Is Not a Metaphor: On History, Citizenship, and the Danger of False Analogies
Visual posted on Facebook: “Somewhere in a attic, a little girl is writing about ICE.”
And about that visual someone has responded: “The little girl is more than likely also a U.S. citizen, same way Anne Frank was a German citizen by birth.”
Every generation inherits Anne Frank. The girl herself, however, was taken from the world before she could grow old, but her diary, her voice, and the moral weight of what happened to her live on becoming what should remain a lesson from history. That inheritance carries a responsibility: to remember accurately, and to resist using her life as symbolic for experiences that are not, in fact, the same.
A social-media analogy comparing a hypothetical child hiding from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ) to Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis may feel emotionally compelling, providing those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) a sugar high with morally superior comfort, but it is not historically accurate. Worse, it blurs the very lessons Anne Frank’s life and death can teach.
From Whom Was Anne Frank Hiding?
Anne Frank was born on June 12,1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany [1]. That fact is often cited as proof that citizenship offers little protection in times of fear. But this framing skips a crucial truth: Nazi Germany destroyed the meaning of citizenship itself.
By the mid-1930s, the Nazi state had redefined citizenship along fallacious racial lines: the Nazis mandated that the Jews were an inferior “race.” Thus, Jews were no longer citizens in any meaningful sense.
Through the Nuremberg Laws and later decrees, they were stripped of legal protection, civil rights, and finally nationality [2]. In 1941, Jews living outside Germany—including Anne Frank—were formally denaturalized. They became stateless by design.
Anne Frank went into hiding not simply because of a disputed legal status, but because her existence had been criminalized. If discovered, she faced deportation to a camp where survival was unlikely because death was often immediate. There was no appeal process, no sympathetic court, no lawful path to safety. The state was not merely enforcing policy; it was pursuing annihilation.
Citizenship There and Then vs Citizenship Here and Now
To say that Anne Frank was “a citizen too” is technically true but morally empty, because Nazi citizenship was revocable at will. It offered no shield against racial ideology or state violence. Law existed only to serve the power of the state.
U.S. citizenship operates on a fundamentally different premise. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, [3] citizenship is a constitutional status that cannot be stripped by executive agencies, racial classifications, or political moods. A U.S. citizen—child or adult—cannot be deported. This fact is not a matter of discretion; it is settled law.
When U.S. citizens are wrongfully detained in immigration enforcement actions, those incidents represent violations of law, not expressions of it. They trigger lawsuits, judicial review, and public accountability. The existence of legal failure is not the same as the absence of law altogether. Anne Frank had no such protections to fail.
What ICE Is—and What It Is Not
ICE is a civil immigration enforcement agency operating within a functioning legal system. Immigration violations are civil matters. Proceedings involve hearings, attorneys, appeals, and oversight [4]. Like any system, it is imperfect, at times harsh, and open to criticism—but it is not genocidal, therefore, not analogous to Nazism.
ICE does not target children because of race or religion. It does not operate death camps. It does not seek the eradication of an entire people. These distinctions are not rhetorical conveniences; they are moral boundaries. To erase them is to misunderstand both the Holocaust and contemporary America.
The Cost of Misusing Holocaust History
Holocaust analogies demand care. The Holocaust was not simply “government overreach.” It was a state-engineered genocide, carried out with bureaucratic precision and ideological obsession. Its victims were not caught in administrative systems; they were hunted.
When Anne Frank is invoked casually—when her hiding place becomes a metaphor for fear in general—her story is diminished. She becomes an emotional device rather than a historical person. And history, once blurred, loses its power to warn. Remembering Anne Frank accurately does not weaken moral arguments today; it strengthens them. Precision is not coldness; it is respect.
Criticism without Distortion
One can grieve for children harmed by any administration policy. One can argue and should argue passionately for reform. One can condemn cruelty where it exists. None of that requires invoking Nazis.
In fact, such comparisons often signal a failure of imagination: the inability to describe injustices on their own terms. When every wrong becomes the Holocaust, the Holocaust becomes just another talking point—and present wrongs become harder, not easier, to address.
What Anne Frank Still Teaches Us
Anne Frank teaches us what happens when law collapses into ideology, when citizenship becomes conditional, and when fear is turned into policy. She does not teach us that all fear is the same, or that every state action is equivalent. She deserves better than metaphorical reuse. She deserves remembrance grounded in truth.
History does not need exaggeration. It needs honesty, proportion, and care—the very qualities Anne Frank herself brought to the act of writing, even while hiding from a world that had decided she did not belong in it.
How Partisan Politics Distort Analogies
Part of why we see comparisons like this so often is the way modern political arguments work. Some commentators and social-media voices exaggerate threats to generate outrage. In today’s highly polarized climate, opponents are often treated not just as political rivals but as moral (even mortal) enemies.
This kind of exaggeration—exemplified by the phenomenon labeled “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in popular discourse—turns ordinary policy debates into emotional theater.
Opponents the Trump administration interpret every government action as an existential threat, and thus, they reach for dramatic analogies, even when those analogies are historically inaccurate. Using Anne Frank as a metaphor or symbol for any kind of fear or injustice is part of this pattern: it signals outrage, but it distorts reality.
This distortion heralds a twofold danger: it trivializes real historical suffering, and it undermines possible criticism of current policies. One can oppose ICE, advocate for children, and call for reform, but the conversation becomes less productive when hyperbolic, false comparisons replace honest, careful, accurate analysis.
Sources
[1] Anne FrankThe Diary of a Young Girl. Translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, Bantam Books, 1993.
[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Nuremberg Laws.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2023.
[3] United States Constitution, Amendment XIV.
[4] David Weissbrodt and Laura Danielson. Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell. West Academic Publishing, 2017.
Minimalist Gesture and the Aesthetics of Refusal: Fragmentation, Surface, and Postmodern Quietude in Contemporary Poetry
Contemporary postmodern lyric sensibility is often characterized by fragmentation, semantic restraint, and an explicit refusal of narrative or interpretive accumulation.
A small selection of poetic fragments disseminated via social media by Tom Koontz,* who self-identifies as working across literary and visual modes provides a concentrated example of this literary phenomenon.
Fragment as Method
This essay approaches these fragments as fully realized instances of an aesthetic that privileges gesture over development, surface over depth, and notation over argument. This aesthetic, furthermore, situates the poet’s fragments within a lineage of postmodern minimalism and considers their relationship to nihilism, Zen-inflected quietism, and the modernist critique of romantic transcendence.
Aligning with longstanding postmodern uses of fragmentation as a structuring principle, the literary fragment [1] has long occupied an ambiguous position in literary history, oscillating between ruin and revelation, failure and form. In contemporary postmodern practice, however, the fragment increasingly asserts itself not as a remainder of a larger work, but as a fully intentional aesthetic unit. Koontz’s recent poetic postings exemplify this orientation with notable consistency.
Rather than aspiring toward narrative coherence, cumulative argument, or sustained metaphorical development, these texts embrace separation as a guiding principle. Each fragment stands independently, neither demanding nor rewarding contextual integration. The resulting effect is not incompletion but a deliberate, self-contained minimalism: a gesture that simultaneously asserts presence and declines elaboration.
This study recognizes the Koontzean fragments as exemplars of postmodern nihilism [2] in which meaning is neither promised nor pursued, and the textual surface itself constitutes the work’s principal significance.
In this respect, the fragments offer a particularly instructive case of contemporary poetic practice, in which restraint, discontinuity, and aesthetic detachment are elevated into a formal strategy—allowing the reader to witness an intentional refusal as a measure of poetic method.
Theoretical Context: Postmodern Nihilism and Minimal Demand
The term postmodern nihilism is employed here descriptively rather than polemically. Consistent with observations on the digital constraints shaping contemporary minimalist verse [3], it denotes an aesthetic disposition in which meaning is neither interrogated nor dramatized but flagrantly bypassed. Unlike modernist negation, which often emphasizes the loss of transcendence, postmodern nihilism accepts absence as a neutral condition, notable in its undisciplined indifference, while remaining modest in conceptual ambition.
Within this framework, minimalism functions not as compression but as strategic substitution. Brevity replaces argument; spacing replaces development; tone replaces insight. The fragment becomes a site where poetic authority is implied through restraint rather than exercised through elaboration.
The Koontzean fragments align closely with this tendency. They do not strive to say more with less, but rather to say little and stop, achieving a consistency admirable in its punctiliousness, if restrained in expressive reach. The reader is not asked to excavate meaning so much as to register atmospheric effect and tonal gesture, themselves notable as formalized strategies.
Fragment One: Gestural Insistence and the Subtlety of Absence
She laughed. I was very blasé
The speaker in this fragment stages an interpersonal moment while declining to elaborate it. Laughter appears without context, motivation, or consequence, and the speaker’s response presents emotional detachment as a completed posture rather than an experience subject to inquiry.
The lexical choice is notable. The term “blasé” already denotes a condition of saturation or indifference, and its modification by “very” operates less as a conventional intensifier than as a tonal signal, reinforcing attitude rather than sharpening meaning.
The line break isolates the adjective visually, encouraging the reader to register the affective stance itself as the fragment’s primary content, independent of gradation or narrative cause.
In this respect, the fragment exemplifies a minimalist poetics in which expressive sufficiency is achieved not through semantic precision but through the confident assertion of mood.
Emotional detachment is treated as self-evident and complete, requiring no calibration or further qualification. The effect is one of cultivated neutrality—formally coherent, if deliberately inattentive to finer distinctions of degree or development.
Fragment Two: Composed Stillness and the Practice of Observational Neutrality
winter trees across the green of the hospital
Here, the fragment turns outward, presenting a static visual composition. The hospital—a site traditionally charged with narratives of illness, recovery, and mortality—is rendered primarily as a color field. Human presence remains implied but abstract.
The fragment’s restraint is central to its effect. Trees are seasonal but not symbolic; the hospital is visible but not inhabited. The image resists narrative activation, offering composed quietude, executed with consistency, if limited in interpretive scope.
By declining to specify circumstance or response, the fragment allows meaning to remain ambient and formally self-contained, exemplifying a disciplined aesthetic posture. Its steadiness is admirable in its precision, if modest in narrative ambition.
Fragment Three: Lyric Abstraction and Imagined Depth
love bathes
in a patch of sunlight
on the bottom of the sea
at the bottom of my heart
The speaker in this fragment reaches most overtly toward lyric elevation. The abstraction “love” appears without relational context, existing as a condition rather than an action. Its passivity suggests stillness rather than struggle.
The conjunction of sunlight and the sea floor produces a striking image of depth and illumination, despite the impossibility assigned the sun’s nature. Rather than functioning as a worked conceit, however, the image operates atmospherically, gesturing toward profundity without insisting on coherence.
The parallelism between “the bottom of the sea” and “the bottom of my heart” establishes a rhetorical symmetry that links external vastness and internal feeling. The connection is formal rather than experiential, allowing the two spaces to echo one another without narrative mediation.
The fragment exemplifies a postmodern lyricism that trusts abstraction and spatial metaphor to generate resonance independently of lived detail. Depth is invoked rather than developed, leaving the reader in a contemplative rather than interpretive posture.
Fragment Four: Composed Stillness and the Politics of Inaction
duck coming in— head up / butt down splash land
The speaker in this fragment introduces movement but maintains the prevailing stance of detachment. The duck’s landing is rendered through clipped phrasing and visual markers that emphasize immediacy over significance.
The slash in “head up / butt down” functions kinetically, mimicking the bird’s adjustment in descent. “Splash land” concludes the fragment with a percussive finality that registers the event without reflection.
As elsewhere, the speaker refrains from symbolic framing. The duck is not invested with metaphorical weight; the moment is not elevated into insight. The fragment records and releases the image with minimal demand on the reader.
Fragment Five: Domestic Sacrament and the Aesthetics of Shared Attention
a fiery goblet brimming with dew
we break fast in the orange light
my toast: you drinking it all in
This fragment stages a morning ritual that aspires to sacramental intimacy while remaining resolutely noncommittal. The image combines elemental excess with condensation, a paradox that gestures toward depth without clarifying its stakes. The image is evocative but static, functioning more as atmospheric garnish than as a vehicle of thought.
The act of breaking fast “in the orange light” situates the scene within a familiar lyric register of dawn-as-renewal. Yet the poem resists complication: the light is neither interrogated nor transformed. The conclusion redirects attention outward.
It thus converts the moment into an affirmation of the other’s receptivity rather than an exploration of the speaker’s consciousness. What emerges appears to be a polished vignette whose restraint reads less as discipline than as abdication. The poem knows when to stop, but not why it began.
Fragment Six: The Earnest Vessel and the Consolation of Illumination
I fashioned a bowl of my life, ardent with shadows
you filled it with fresh sunshine
Here the speaker mobilizes a container metaphor to frame the self as a crafted object, weighted with ardor and darkness. The gesture is recognizably confessional, yet its abstraction neutralizes the specificity such a posture typically demands. The bowl signifies interiority without permitting access to it.
The introduction of the second person enacts a familiar economy of redemption, wherein the self’s darkness is redeemed through an external, undefined presence. Sunshine functions as an all-purpose corrective, unburdened by complexity or cost.
The fragment’s appeal lies in its emotional legibility, but this legibility is also its limitation. By resolving tension through a single luminous substitution, the poem forecloses inquiry. What remains is a pleasing symmetry that unsettles rather than reassures, offering metaphor as pressure rather than as consolation.
Fragment Seven: Repetition as Contemplative Substitute
moonlight on the far fields
moonlight on the doorstep
This piece consists entirely of mirrored observation, invoking moonlight across two spatial coordinates. The repetition suggests stillness and attentiveness, inviting the reader into a posture of quiet perception. Yet the poem’s reliance on duplication substitutes structural echo for analytical development.
The shift from “far fields” to “the doorstep” implies a movement from distance to proximity, but the poem declines to register any corresponding change in perception or affect. Moonlight remains moonlight, uninflected by scale or intimacy.
The fragment’s economy is precise, but its restraint verges on evasive. By offering equivalence where difference might matter, the poem achieves a surface calm that resists interpretation. The result is a musing that gestures toward contemplative depth while remaining content to rest in visual symmetry alone.
Fragment Eight: Cosmic Undressing and the Poetics of Suggestion
undressing on the other side of the sun
This fragment relies almost entirely on suggestion, compressing its effect into a single, enigmatic image, which invokes intimacy, transgression, and cosmic distance in equal measure, yet declines to anchor these resonances in any discernible experience.
The line breaks orchestrate suspense, encouraging the reader to supply meaning that the poem itself withholds. The image gestures toward transcendence or erotic revelation, but its abstraction insulates it from scrutiny.
Such reticence may be read as sophistication, though it risks functioning as a refusal to think through the implications of its own metaphor. The poem’s power resides less in what it articulates than in what it leaves unsaid, a strategy that flatters the gesture while absolving it of responsibility.
Fragment Nine: Typographical Zen and the Performance of Emptiness
sitting empty
this zen
barn
holds nothing
tolls all
The speaker in this piece presents emptiness as both theme and technique, arranging sparse language into a vertical architecture that mimics negative space. The barn, emptied of contents, becomes a symbolic container for negation itself. The visual pacing reinforces the poem’s aspiration toward contemplative blankness.
The concluding turn introduces a wordplay that gestures toward metaphysical resonance. Yet the pun resolves too neatly, converting absence into aphorism rather than sustaining tension.
The fragment’s discipline is evident, but its emptiness feels carefully curated rather than arduously achieved. Zen functions here as an aesthetic posture, offering the appearance of depth through subtraction, while sparing the poem the labor of philosophical risk.
Fragment Ten: Witness without Transformation
i was watching, when the swans began to sing
This effusion hinges on an act of watching interrupted by an unexpected phenomenon: swans that sing. The surreal element promises rupture, yet the poem’s syntax and tone absorb the event without disturbance. The speaker remains a passive observer, unchanged by what he records.
The lineation slows the moment, encouraging a hushed attentiveness, but the poem declines to explore the implications of its own strangeness. Singing swans appear not as a challenge to perception but as an ornamental flourish, a borrowed emblem of wonder, even as it alludes to a long debunked phenomenon.
What distinguishes the fragment is its refusal to risk consequence. Observation is treated as sufficient poetic labor. In this way, the poem exemplifies a contemporary lyric posture in which the marvelous is noted rather than metabolized, and attention replaces insight as the terminal value.
The sophomoric lower case on the first person singular pronoun adds a pinch of spice to the otherwise bland misfortune of assigning swans a talent that they sorely lack. Again, the special provenance of this fragment proves worth its weight in gold as the piece represents the surface quietude of the postmodern mindset.
Zen Quietism and Romantic Misunderstanding
Taken together, these fragments articulate a coherent aesthetic of refusal. They do not seek to persuade, console, or illuminate. Instead, they model a mode of poetic attention that values blank stares, surface musing, and attachment to a misunderstood exotic.
This sensibility bears resemblance to Zen-inflected minimalism, though it also recalls T. S. Eliot’s critique of the “romantic misunderstanding” of Eastern philosophy: a tendency to mistake mere silence for profundity and absence for insight.
In these Koontzean fragments, such restraint rarely signals deliberate discipline; instead, it more often manifests as the default posture of an aesthetic content with superficial resonance.
Yet this resonance, too, may be understood as part of their achievement. As Azambuja has traced in the broader tradition of Zen’s impact on American poetic cosmology [4], such poems do not argue for meaning; they quietly decline it. Their consistency in this regard is glaring.
Exemplarity without Aspiration
These fragments offer a concentrated illustration of a postmodern poetic mode that trusts minimal gesture to stand as expression. Their significance lies not in what they say, but in how clearly they enact an aesthetic that asks poetry to do very little—executed with commendable consistency, even as it remains restrained in design.
They do not aspire to a collective reality, nor to logical development, and they definitely defy resolution. Instead, they remain faithful to an ethic of sufficiency, in which noticing replaces knowing and gesture substitutes for assertion—a practice that is as noteworthy in its formal fidelity, as it is limited in any muse-inspired reach.
As such, these pieces function less as individual poems than as exemplary instances of a contemporary poetic disposition [5]—one that finds confidence precisely in the decision to stop, executed with a restraint notable for its formal rigor, even as it remains circumscribed in execution, ambition, and imagination.
*Fair Use Notice: Fragments by Tom Koontz (@tomkoontz.bsky.social) reproduced under fair use for purposes of commentary, in accordance with U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 107).
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