Not Dark Yet: An American Poetry Project

I refer to this as an “American Poetry Project” because it is my own private attempt to take a look at the state of our nation and to render some public sense of the times in poetic form. I wrote the first poem, “When Hope Is Set in Stone” on Inauguration Day and have written a poem each week since then to try to grasp the mood in our country. President Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, referred to the 87 years since the country’s founding and the war which was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

We are now 240 years beyond our nation’s formative Declaration of Independence, and some see these times as testing the very fabric of democracy. Below are the poetic “witnesses” that I have composed to date. I do not plan to cease in my weekly writings, but with 12 poems to date, it seemed like a good time to stop and take stock of what we have seen.

The blog series is called, “Bearing Witness to the Times,” and here are the first 12 poems of the series (you can click on any title to read the poem):

When Hope is Set in Stone

There’s a New Man in Town

Sanctions and Bans (a national nursery rhyme)

Bury My Heart

System Partially Down

The Why of Daffodils

Guardrails

Verdicts and Revolutions

Ale for what Ails Ye

Dealer of the White House (to the Tune of “Master of the House”)

The March of the Oligarchs

No Time for Weeping