.

Fear for the Future

When I ponder the future
I get so distraught
For the Leftists control
Most production of thought.

.

.

To Better Protect Democracy

The WAPO and the New York Times
Should move all their reporters,
Into the Democratic Party’s
National headquarters.

.

.

Loss of Stigma

Leftists—sole possessors of compassion,
Have lifted stigma from indecency,
Spurring loathsome conduct as new fashion,
Diluting functioning society.

.

.

Russel Winick recently started writing poetry at nearly age 65, after ending a long legal career. He resides in Naperville, Illinois.

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32 Responses

  2. Theresa Dould Cummings

    I am becoming more and more confused by this way of looking at every Democrat that enters the fray of poetry. Yes, I am a Democrat. I am not a demigod to ulterior motives of skulduggery. I did not vote for Donald Trump because I felt he was a man who lied to achieve his goals. No one knows who I vote for once inside my ballot.I come here for the sheer beauty of poetry.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      If you didn’t vote for Trump, you voted either for Hillary Clinton or Joseph Biden, or both. Do you really believe that those two ethically challenged grifters haven’t lied to achieve their goals?

      If you’re here for “the sheer beauty of poetry,” then just read the poems that you like, and ignore the rest.

      Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      And yet, here you are, virtue-signaling by telling us all you’re a Democrat because Trump is a liar (as if other politicians aren’t).

      Many of us have nothing but contempt for the Democratic Party because one of its shibboleths is the denial of the right to life of the unborn. I know I keep coming back to this issue, but that’s because millions of people are slaughtered in this way every year in the United States alone, and when someone thinks that’s all right, I can’t listen to anything he says about morality, any more than if he approved of the Nazi Holocaust, which the Abortion Holocaust dwarfs in terms of body counts. That’s why we see the Democratic Party as no better than the Nazi Party. Compared to that one issue (let alone adding any others I might mention), any offense Republicans may have committed is almost nothing.

      As for poetry, most of it these days is written by leftists, as even leftist poets admit (see below).

      https://classicalpoets.org/2018/08/10/the-rise-of-conservative-art-and-poetry/

      “Moving to the realm of poetry, the state of conservative art in the shadows was expressed perhaps best when New York Times poetry editor David Orr wrote in his 2012 book: ‘Almost all poets, including myself, lean left. There are maybe five conservative American poets, not one of whom can safely show his face at a writing conference for fear of being angrily doused with herbal tea.’

      “Within the poetry establishment, Orr’s words are true enough but they beg the question: are conservative poets being (ironically) oppressed and persecuted? Replace the word ‘left’ with ‘white’ and the word ‘conservative’ with ‘black” and you get a statement most would denounce as unfair: ‘Almost all poets, including myself, lean white. There are maybe five black American poets, not one of whom can safely show his face at a writing conference for fear of being angrily doused with herbal tea.’ The takeaway here is that no one should be treated this way and the establishment is oppressive and due for a change. People love an underdog and conservative art is the underdog of today.”

      Reply
    • Paul Freeman

      Yes, Theresa, I feel the same. It’s a shame that politics has been brought into poetry.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Paul, less than a month ago your poem about banning the word “field” was published here. You have also published other political poems on this site. You have brought politics into poetry.
        It’s OK when you do it… right?

        Russel… don’t let the hypocrites stop you.

      • Paul Freeman

        Mike, look up satire versus frothy-mouthed hatred.

        That’s all.

      • Mike Bryant

        satire
        săt′īr″
        noun
        1. A literary work in which human foolishness or vice is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
        2. The branch of literature constituting such works.
        3. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose human foolishness or vice.

        versus
        vûr′səs, -səz
        preposition
        1. In conflict or competition with; against.
        2. As the alternative to or in contrast with.
        3. Against; ; — chiefly used in legal language, and abbreviated to v. or vs.

        frothy mouth
        frô′thē ˈmau̇th
        verb noun
        A disease of sheep.

        hatred
        hā′trĭd
        noun
        1. Intense animosity or hostility.
        2. The emotion or feeling of hate; hate. See hate, n., 1.
        3. SynonymsIll-will, Enmity, etc. (see animosity); Hatred, Dislike, Antipathy, etc. (see antipathy); Disgrace, Disfavor, Dishonor (see odium); detestation, loathing, abhorrence.

        I looked it all up, and I think you mean, “A poem against hateful, diseased sheep.”

      • Joshua C. Frank

        Apparently bringing politics into poetry is only all right when liberals do it. Liberals can say whatever they want without repercussions, while we conservatives just need to shut up and bow down to our liberal overlords.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Absolutely correct, Joshua. When Freeman says “politics,” he means conservative or rightist politics. Not his own.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        All people are sheep; the Bible says, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Sheep have no chance of surviving without a shepherd, hence the Bible verses that use the simile “like sheep without a shepherd.”

        The question is, who is your shepherd? Is it God? Or is it a state that factory-farms you for diseased, low-quality mutton?

  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Short, to the point, and hitting the nail on the head! As for Theresa, remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Politics and societal dysfunction are most worthy subjects for poets to criticize and present their views. I revere the poet dissidents in the time of the Soviet Union, when they were persecuted and had to smuggle their works out of country for publication besides couching their language in allegories that seemed to elude the elites.

    Reply
  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Thank you for your bite-size pieces of poetic wisdom, Russel. You are following some great names in drawing attention to today’s political climate and all that is wrong with it. I love it when poetry gets gritty and I love this one by Shelley, regardless of his political leanings. It’s an unrestrained, in-your-face, poetical, political rant written with a linguistic finesse that knocks the spots off Ozymandias (in my humble opinion). As Roy says, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

    England in 1819 by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    An old, mad, blind, despised, 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 leechlike to their fainting country cling
    Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
    A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;
    An army, whom liberticide and prey
    Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
    Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
    Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
    A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
    Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
    Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      As I recall, Shelley was the one who said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

      Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      It sounds like Shelley was spouting hatred against the ruling class. My, my my… isn’t that politically incorrect?

      Reply
  5. Cynthia Erlandson

    Very succinctly (and humorously) stated, Russel. (reporters/headquarters — love it!)

    Reply
  6. Mike Bryant

    Susan, I believe Shelley wrote that poem in response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, 1819. He also wrote The Masque of Anarchy, which was banned for 30 years.

    Here are some selected verses:

    “Ye who suffer woes untold,
    Or to feel, or to behold
    Your lost country bought and sold
    With a price of blood and gold.

    Let a vast assembly be,
    And with great solemnity
    Declare with measured words that ye
    Are, as God has made ye, free.

    Let the charged artillery drive
    Till the dead air seems alive
    With the clash of clanging wheels,
    And the tramp of horses’ heels.

    Stand ye calm and resolute,
    Like a forest close and mute,
    With folded arms and looks which are
    Weapons of unvanquished war,

    And that slaughter to the Nation
    Shall steam up like inspiration,
    Eloquent, oracular;
    A volcano heard afar.

    Rise like Lions after slumber
    In unvanquishable number,
    Shake your chains to earth like dew
    Which in sleep had fallen on you-
    Ye are many – they are few.”

    Shame on Shelley for bringing politics into poetry.

    Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    Milton wrote poems about politics. Dryden wrote poems about politics. Wordsworth wrote poems about politics. William Blake wrote poems about politics. Lord Byron wrote poems about politics. Shelley wrote poems about politics. Robert Browning wrote poems about politics. Kipling wrote poems about politics. W.B. Yeats wrote poems about politics. Ezra Pound wrote poems about politics. Roy Campbell wrote poems about politics. Pablo Neruda wrote poems about politics. They all may have had different politics, but they sure as hell wrote about it.

    And yet some people here are complaining that they have come to the SCP “just for the sheer beauty of poetry, and not for any politics.” How quaint. And how out of touch.

    As my grandfather would have said, “Va fa ‘ntu culu di to’ suredda.”

    Reply
  9. Norma Pain

    I enjoyed all three poems Russel. Your ability to get it down on paper in such short and clever rhymes is amazing. Thank you.

    Reply

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