[Gregory Dowling]

On John Whitworth's thread on Accomplished Members Rose Kelleher wrote:

Maybe we should start a thread in Mastery for kickass political poems (or revive it if there already is one).

I'm sure there have been such threads but I haven't been able to trace one in a brief search this morning. So here's a new one. If anyone finds an old one, maybe they could provide a link in this thread.

Let's start with one of the poems mentioned by John, which he himself acknowledges as a powerful sonnet:

P.B. Shelley:
England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despis'd, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn--mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starv'd and stabb'd in the untill'd field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edg'd sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,
Religion Christless, Godless--a book seal'd,
A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepeal'd,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

And just to stir things up a little, here's one by John himself, from his volume Being the Bad Guy:

Old Bull and Bush

How may hands have I shaked' is a quote from 'Bushisms', a little yellow book everyone should own.


How many hands have I shaked?
How many geese have I cuken?
How many bribes have I taked?
How many lies have I puken?
How many promises breaked?
How many enemies nuken?

How may saves have I baconen?
How many bulls have I shatted?
How many earths have I quakenen?
How many highs have I hatted
How many grasses bin snakenen?
How many scenes bin well quatted?

How many warms have I freezened?
How many nonsenses natteren?
How many palms have I greasened?
How many truths have I ratteren?
How many reasons unreasoned?
How many stinking fish batteren?

How many documents fakenen?
How many treaties forgotted?
How many bad guys outstakenen?
How many terrorists potted?
How many widows upwakenen?
How many kiddikins shotted?

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Gregory. I am honoured. It has to be said that a verse making fun of George Dubbya is scarcely a fearless political act in the UK. Indeed one praising him would be much more like that. I was much more intrigued by the form I had created. Similarly, Shelley was risking nothing. Good poem though.

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for this thread, Gregory. The repetends of this anti-war villanelle will never leave my mind:

"Newsphoto: Basra, Collateral Damage," by Steve Kowit.

To continue some points made down on John's AM thread: I note that this one, like Owen's "Dulce et Decorum" drums its own moral points at the end. But I think the straight reportage does the work.

[Andrew Frisardi]

John Haines, whose death was recently announced over on GT, wrote a number of political poems--including a satirical series called "Diogenes in Washington" which I can't find in my books.

I found this late poem of his, "Notes on the Capitalist Persuasion", online.

He was a good friend of Hayden Carruth and Wendell Berry, two other poets who were/are outspoken about politics in their poetry.

(Editing back in to add that I don't think this is a particularly memorable poem, and in fact is a good example of some of the pitfalls of writing political poetry. So I guess it only fits half the description of this thread--it's political but not kickass. John H. did write some kickass political stuff as well, but I don't have time to find it or type it in at the moment.)

[Ed Shacklee]

Here's one of the most famous poems by Claude McKay, a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance:


If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies an open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

xxxxx- Claude Mckay

[Petra Norr]

A wee one that packs a wallop:

The Golf Links
by Sarah Norcliffe Parker


The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
.