Nader’s Poem

Ralph Nader has composed a poem of sort for Hillary Clinton, which I found via Wonkette. Since I write poetry, I thought I’d offer a helpful critique and a revision of the poem at the end of this post. First the poem itself:

• Don’t Listen to Senator Leahy

Senator Clinton:

Just read where Senator Patrick Leahy is calling on you to drop out of the Presidential race.

Believe me.

I know something about this.

Here’s my advice:

Don’t listen to people when they tell you not to run anymore.

That’s just political bigotry.

Listen to your own inner citizen First Amendment voice.

This is America.

Just like every other citizen, you have a right to run.

Whenever you like.

For as long as you like.

It’s up to you, Hillary.

Just tell them –

It’s democracy.

Get used to it.

Yours truly,

Ralph Nader

Warning: If you’re easily bored by discussion of poetics, you might want to skip straight to the revised poem.

Ok, first of all thank you for not using a rhyme scheme, sonnet form or a strict sense of meter. That already puts you one step above the rest. The biggest problem with this poem: too much space. Almost every line is end-stopped, it’s own stanza, and most end with a punctuation mark. Unless you were going after an intentionally slow pace, which would work well with his theme of everyone trying to rush Hillary out of the race before September, some of these stops need to be eliminated. (Even if you were going for that it’s way over the top.)

When you break the line, typically there is an intended break in speech not unlike a comma or period. The reader is forced to evaluate the line as an idea before moving on and connecting it with the next line even if it’s a continuation of the same thought.

When you break into another stanza typically there is a larger separation indicating that those lines in the same stanza are associated, and those lines in the next have another set of associations, not unlike the separation found with a paragraph break.

When you use a period it has the same basic function of a period in prose, yet the way the line breaks and stanzas separate the sentences (if they exist) plays with or against period use. When you use all end stopped lines (a line that ends at the end of a clause), you lose the ability to play with this dynamic.

Using all three of these devices together with each line, the pace becomes very slow and the reader hangs on the poetics of every word or phrase. Since you’re using very colloquial language there’s no real point to this. Instead of dressing up your language, you can play with the lines and sentence structure to create tension and release.

The line “This is America.” is the most obvious release. Some people will tell you to use periods to emphasize important points, but in my revision, I’ve kept it out– the line is strong enough on it’s own. Any reader worth a damn is going to know how to read the line.

I do enjoy the signing of the name at the end since it calls up old forms of passed poetic cultures and also suggests the form of a letter is being deconstructed.

Here’s my suggested revision:

• Don’t Listen to Senator Leahy

for Hillary

Just read where Senator Patrick Leahy is calling
on you to drop out of the Presidential race

Believe me, I know
something about this
Here’s my advice:

Don’t listen to people
when they tell you not to run
anymore

That’s just political bigotry. Listen
to your own inner citizen First
Amendment voice– This is America

Just like every other
citizen, you have a right
to run, whenever you like

or as long as you like

It’s up to you, Hillary, just tell them –
It’s democracy, get used to it

Yours truly,
Ralph Nader

I’ll be checking out the Nader campaign for further poems, maybe Obama doesn’t have a lock as the writing candidate.

Do you have your own revision? Perhaps an ee cummings experiment with white space? Submit it via e-mail or in the comments section and we’ll evaluate it.

Update: There are lots of poems on his blog that suffer from the same unfortunate pacing problem. I don’t know if I’ll come back and revise them as well, but I’ll keep an eye out for new poems from Mr. Nader.