W.D. Ehrhart

by W.D. Ehrhart Here is a poem from Palestinian poet Mosab abu Toha’s newest book, Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024): Ramadan 2025 Around that dinner table, missing are the chairs where my mother, my father, and my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays, and where my siblings and their kids used to drink tea at sunset when they visited. No one is here anymore. Not even sunset. In the kitchen, the table is missing. In the house, the kitchen is missing. In the house, the house is missing. Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise. Forest of Noise is Mosab’s second collection …

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for the innocent in Gaza,the Occupied Territories,and throughout the world How does one respond to such destructionwith a poem? Can poetry outweigha 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb,save the life of a single wounded child,put an end to the hatred and madnessand inhumanity of those who dothe butchery? Might just as well bepissing up a rope as thinking poetrycan matter where it really countsthere among the dead and dying,armless, legless, homeless, starving,families shattered, orphaned children,misery without hope of ever ending. And here I sit in safety half a worldaway. My tax dollars buying bombsmy government supplies to those whodo the killing. How can one be silentin the face …

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by W.D. Ehrhart In a famous scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur explains to a peasant named Dennis that he became king after the Lady in the Lake gave him Excalibur. Dennis replies, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” I’ve thought a lot about that scene over the years since I first saw it in 1975. Since then, this nation has been governed by a president who was elected by the voters of a single congressional district in Michigan, a president who used to peddle Chesterfield cigarettes as great Christmas gifts and …

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I. Let us combine Washington’s birthday with Lincoln’s birthday so that we can add a holiday for the man who once described the United States government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” II. There are 14 quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. on his memorial in DC, but the quote above was not included. III. Are we supposed to honor all our presidents on Presidents’ Day? IV. William Henry Harrison was our president for 32 days, barely enough time to screw things up. Lucky man. V. Warren G. Harding appointed a US Army deserter to be the first director of the …

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