Monday, December 14, 2009

Of Poetry and Presidents

"LORDS DON'T LEAP. / They Sleep." That is the extent of Day 10 in Carol Ann Duffy's "The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009." But Barack Obama is also named in the poem, and presumably it's not exactly a negative reference.... Should comparisons be made to Whitman and Lincoln? Well, probably not just yet.

Links
Carol Ann Duffy, "The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009," Radio Times (December 2009).
Lyndsay Moss, "Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy slams bankers with new take on the Twelve Days of Christmas," The Scotsman (December 7, 2009).
Jennifer Schuessler, "A History of Odes to the Chief," New York Times (December 12, 2009).
David Reynolds, "Lincoln and Whitman," History Now (December 2005).
Teaching plans, "Whitman and Lincoln" by National Portrait Gallery and the Choral Arts Society of Washington (2008).