Did you know Barack Obama wrote poetry? This I knew for quite a while, but since the topic came up in a conversation below, here are two poems he published at age 20 in a college literary magazine -- and I agree with Harold Bloom's take on them (follow link in the article) -- that as student poems, they aren't bad at all. They express feeling & sensitivity, and he knows what anticipatory and transformational line breaks are. With some editing here and there (and there and there), the first one in particular could be quite good. The second one is more successful on its own terms, but those terms I find quite obscure.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Barack Obama's poetry
Did you know Barack Obama wrote poetry? This I knew for quite a while, but since the topic came up in a conversation below, here are two poems he published at age 20 in a college literary magazine -- and I agree with Harold Bloom's take on them (follow link in the article) -- that as student poems, they aren't bad at all. They express feeling & sensitivity, and he knows what anticipatory and transformational line breaks are. With some editing here and there (and there and there), the first one in particular could be quite good. The second one is more successful on its own terms, but those terms I find quite obscure.
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