Inaugural Yearbook Poems

 Yes, yes, yes, I am so happy and relieved for our American friends to be done with that whole dystopian presidential nightmare, and I got the good feels at the daylong party, and I was so happy that the poet lady said that whole poem that made everyone all warm and feely.  However, I am going to say something that would probably get me a sock-full of dogshit to the face if I voiced it in public:  I just don't find the poem all that great.  Like the message was wonderful, and accessible, and maybe that's all we really needed, but in the back of my head, it just seems so smart-kid high schooly, like it would be written by the valedictorian who is dreaming of getting out of their stinktown and going on to greater things (and really, they will, but their poetry writing days will be left as soon as they get their last report card and head off for university).  It was just a little too much Kumbaya and shit for me.  Maybe I studied poetry too long and now have some distorted view that if you can understand it right away, it ain't good.  Like, where's the gritty metaphors and shit?  And I know it wouldn't be appropriate for an inauguration poem to be all, like, I dunno, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" with like German/Nazi darkness embedded in it, but make the people think a little. I remember when Maya Angelou (yeah yeah Oprah, I mean "Dr Maya Angelou") was the poet person for Clinton or whoever, and she did that Benediction of the Morning poem, and while it's basically the same theme and says the same thing, it is at least something that made you think to really fully sink in - or maybe it was her lullaby speaking voice - I could never understand a word she said, but it sounded beautiful, because she sort of sang her words when reading - but whatever it was, there was a layer to it.

So I'm not bah-humbug all over the place with her, but it didn't wow me.

Now let's never speak of this again.