More Horrible Than You Imagined: The Poetry of Jimmy Carter

We shall not offer you much of it. That would be cruel, and public sinners interested in expiating their crimes can recourse to Carter's books, poetical or prosaic, and administer as much tonic as will purge their minds of evil thoughts and replace them with blessed vacuity. The presidential poet (or should that be poetical president) has writing 7 books of verse, which can best be described as the musings of Dr. Seuss in a serious mood. Our personal favorite is "Of Possum and Fatback," but the following is undoubtedly his masterpiece. The payoff is in the last line (but don't read it till the end):


Considering the Void

When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with names
of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin;
other planets that the Voyager showed
were like and so unlike our own,
with all their diverse moons,
bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces;
comets with their streaming tails
bent by pressure from our sun;
the skyscape of our Milky Way
holding in its shimmering disc
an infinity of suns
(or say a thousand billion);
knowing there are holes of darkness
gulping mass and even light,
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.


BTW, the Baptist evangelical's cosmic poem of uncertainty has been adopted by Atheists United as their "catechism." It goes to show you. It goes to show you.

***This is one of our Jimmy Carter filler posts, which we insert when we are going to proceed from a light to a serious subject. Expect a very serious post forthcoming.