Poetic Justice Volume 1: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse
By Buck Banks
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About this ebook
“Poetic Justice, Volume I: The 2012 Presidential Campaign” is a wickedly funny collection of satirical political limericks that originally appeared on Pensito Review, the online publication of political and social commentary. The book starts with the rise of the Tea Party in the 2010 midterms, follows the antics of the presidential wannabes through the Republican primaries, culminating with the actual presidential campaign between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and provides some post-election commentary. While having a decidedly progressive bent, Volume 1 is an equal-opportunity dispenser of poetic justice to both Democrats and Republicans.
Buck Banks
Buck Banks is one of three editors of Pensito Review, the online journal of political and social commentary with a decidedly progressive bent. An inveterate limericist, he eschews epic poems, hates haiku and is sanguine toward sonnets. A former English major and insufferable editor, Banks makes his living as a public relations flack in the leisure travel industry. A native Floridian, he resides in Miami.
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Poetic Justice Volume 1 - Buck Banks
Poetic Justice
Volume 1
The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse
By Buck Banks
Copyright 2014 Buck Banks
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Epigraph
Music has lost its power. So has art. So has prose. Now it is the sole responsibility of the writers of limericks to describe the human condition.
— David Shrigley
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
— Anonymous
Table of Contents
Foreword
A Note on Style
A Lighthearted Introduction to the Limerick
Chapter 1: The 2010 Midterms
Chapter 2: The Pre-Primary Season
Chapter 3: The Official GOP Primary Season Begins
Chapter 4: Caucuses and Primaries
Chapter 5: It's Mitt!
Chapter 6: The Campaign ... Finally
Chapter 7: Epilogue
About Buck Banks
About Pensito Media Group
Connect with the Author
Foreword
I became enamored of the limerick form while playing rugby in college. The poetic genre naturally lent itself to the filthy lyrics of bawdy songs favored by ruggers at post-match debauches. It was a simple form to memorize and recall even under the influence of many beers. Over the years I wrote long-form limerick poems on special occasions for the tepid amusement of friends and family.
Inspired by Calvin Trillin’s Deadline Poet
column in The Nation magazine, I endeavored to write satirical limericks on politics and breaking news for the online publication Pensito Review (www.pensitoreview.com), to which I contribute along with fellow editors Jon Ponder and Trish Ponder. It was Jon who coined the category name Poetic Justice
for my limerick output on Pensito.
Now, some 500-plus limericks later, the Pensito Review editorial department has collaborated on an electronic book that collects a selection of my random rhymes on the topic of the 2010 and 2012 elections.
In reading and selecting poems for this collection it occurred to me that some of them are pretty good, while others are, shall we say, sincere, but less successful. You will find examples of the pretty good and the merely sincere as well as much in between in this collection.
It is my hope that these attempts at satirical lyrics elicit a grin, grimace or groan (or better, all three) from you, gentle reader.
Buck Banks
Miami, Florida
November 2013
A Note On Style
The limerick is simple as poetic forms go, compared with a sonnet or villanelle, whatever that is. If you recall parsing poems in school, the five-line limerick rhyming structure is AABBA, where the first two and the last line share an ending rhyme sound and the middle two lines have the same, but a different ending rhyme.
See A Lighthearted Introduction to the Limerick
for information about the history of the form and its various uses through the ages.
Here it is my intention to explain my approach to the constraints of the genre, along with additional conditions I imposed that could be interpreted by some as raising the limerick to a new level and by others as ruining the form altogether.
Here is an early Poetic Justice
published in February 2010, inspired — as so much satirical output has been — by Momma Grizzly
Sarah Palin:
Keynotin’ Palin
She just wants to sound like she matters
In the midst of all the political chatter.
So that's why she's talkin’
And fancy pageant walkin’ —
‘Cause Sarah’s the Tea Party’s Mad Hatter.
This limerick employs the vernacular and slang to sound like the subject of