[Promotum] Presidential Poetry

[Edmund A. Hintz]

A lovely critique of Our Glorious Leader's poetry here:

http://missourireview.org/index.php?g
enre=Editorials&title=Dear+Mr.+G.W.+Bush+%2F+Re%3A+Your+recent+submission
http://tinyurl.com/qvqu 

My favorite paragraph:

>Lines 8 and 9 are perhaps the most fully realized moments in the poem and
>we commend you for them. Though the speaker states that he misses his
>lover, he seems unable to accept responsibility for his true feelings.
>Rather he transfers these emotions to the family pets, going so far as to
>project his own difficulties upon poor Barney. Obviously the shoe that
>the speaker claims was consumed by    the dog reflects the speaker's
>resentment of his lover's sense of self-empowerment, embodied in her
>freedom to choose another lover. The shoe, of course, has been a symbol
>of feminist emancipation throughout the 20th Century, em(body)ing the new
>"mobility" brought about in part by the entrance of masses of women into
>the workforce and into jobs and careers traditionally held exclusively  
> by men (see P. Schroeder, G. Ferraro, H.R. Clinton); by the development
>of modern forms of birth control ("the pill"); and by an economy fueled
>by mass consumption (perhaps best illustrated by malls, of which shoe
>stores are an integral part). We see this dynamic in such every day
>phrases as "walk out of your life" or to "walk all over him," as well as
>in popular    culture. See Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for
>Walking."

Regards,

Ed Hintz
ed@hintz.org