ACCIDENTAL POETRY FROM DONALD TRUMP’S NEW YORK TIMES INTERVIEW NOVEMBER 23, 2016 LARB BLOG

By Gustavo Turner

Yesterday, on November 22, the New York Times interviewed the President-Elect Donald Trump. You can read the full transcript here, or you can read his accidental poetry here.

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“The Robots”

We’ll make the robots too.
Right now we don’t make the robots.
We don’t make anything.
But we’re going to.

***

“The Wind”

The wind
is a very deceiving thing.

***

“The Windmills”

The windmills
kill birds.

***

“Rust”

Rust is
the good part.

***

“Anything”

I don’t care about anything
having to do with anything
having to do with anything
other than the country.

***

“In a Sense”

I think I’ve been treated very rough.
It’s well out there
that I’ve been treated
extremely unfairly
in a sense,
in a true sense.

****

“The Group”

I don’t want to energize the group.
I’m not looking to energize them.
I don’t want to energize the group,
and I disavow
the group.

***

“The Equation”

We have —
you know,
we come
from different sides
of the equation.

***

“A Pack of Cigarettes and a Couple of Beers”

He said, “I’ve always found,
give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers
and I do better with that
than I do with torture.”

***

“Sheepshead Bay”

I had a Brooklyn office, a little office,
in a little apartment building in Brooklyn
in Sheepshead Bay
where I worked
with my father.

From Nothing's Easy By Ian Anderson

Nothing is easy,
You'll find that the squeeze
Won't turn out so bad
Your fingers may freeze,
Worse things happen at sea,
There's good times to be had
So if you're alone
And you're down to the bone,
Just give us a play
You'll smile in a while
And discover that I'll get you happy my way

Nothing's easy

The Voice

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you--just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

― Shel Silverstein

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside—
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

Dana Gioia

After the still small voice
a noise
And after the noise,
a still small voice.
And after it, a noise.
And after it, a still small voice
And after the still small voice,
a noise.
Discard the rest.

- Yehuda Amichai

The Peace of Wild Things

- Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

WITH MY GRANDFATHER

by Zelda

Like our father Abraham

who counted stars at night,

who called out to his Creator

from the furnace,

who bound his son

on the altar –

so was my grandfather.

The same perfect faith

in the midst of the flames,

the same dewy gaze

and soft-curling beard.

Outside, it snowed;

outside, they roared:

“There is no justice,

no judge.”

And in the shambles of his room,

cherubs sang

of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

~