Try to imagine how Norman Mailer must have pitched his ltest poem to New Yorker editor Tina Brown: “Tina, I’ve been trying my hand at verse, and I feel I’ve touched on something quite profound . . .” In any case, here, in its entirety, is Mailer’s poem, which was publi;hed in last week’s “Talk of the Town” section:
Newt Gingrich looks for angry votes;
Ergo he hammers welfare folks.
There lie his presidential hopes:
Apotheosis of the Snopes.
Amazingly enough, Mailer’s is not the worst poem inspired by the Newt Gingrich speakership. Allen Ginsberg’s “On Political Skeletons,” published last month in the Nation, retires that honor. Here is a stanza from that much longer work:
Said the Neo-Conservaive skeleton
Homeless off the Street
Said the Free Market Skeleton
Use ’em up for meat.
At least the Republican revolution seems to be heralding a return o rhyme in the land of Free Verse.
