Trump Is Inspirational ... for Poetry

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/opinion/sunday/trump-poetry-contest.html

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My readers have the best words, as Donald Trump might say. Evidence for that comes from the caliber of the 2,750 poems submitted to my Trump poetry contest. With the help of the Poetry Society of America, I’ve picked my winners, and here they are, offering us a mix of humor, bite and hope.

Richard Kenney, a published poet from Port Townsend, Wash., offered “A Prayer”:

Lisa Grunberger, an associate professor at Temple University who is Jewish, wrote about the vandalism of her house in Philadelphia. An excerpt:

Advanced Placement students at Pittsburg High School in a high-poverty part of the San Francisco Bay Area offered several excellent poems. Natalie Calderon, a 17-year-old Latina student, wrote “Deception”:

Many entries attacked Trump, but not all. John Zengel of Asbury, N.J., says he’s a conservative who disagrees with Trump but thinks Democrats need to drop the condescension. He wrote this poem, “Perspective From a Hard-Working American,” to reflect the thinking of his father:

Some of the verse was despairing, but Michael Collins of Salem, Ore., wrote about making a difference in “No Matter How Small”:

In a similar vein, Lee Robinson, a retired lawyer in Comfort, Tex., ended her elegy on an uplifting note. Her poem, condensed here, is called “Who Says Trump and Poetry Are Incompatible?”