Rating: 
Summary: Essential Reading for the Blue States
Review: This book is essential for those of us who are kept up at night out of our loathing for the current administration and need to learn how to transform our angst into humor. Trillin, though clearly incensed, focuses on the absurdity of the words and actions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. You'll be no less angry after reading Trillin's poems but at least you'll have a smile on your face.
Rating:
Summary: Rhyming Roundup
Review: Trillin's well-aimed verse is a rhyming roundup of longhorn, blowhard, bum steers.
It's clear why Bush is not willin'
To make a Laureate of Calvin Trillin.
You can see how Trillin's verse
About Bush is more like a curse.
But as one who is Trillin's fan
I'd suggest that we honor the man
Without using a secretariat
By naming him Poet Lariat.
His skill with phrases and rhyme
In revealing government crime
May be said to come quite near
To that for roping a steer.
A Poet Lariat for those who care
To see how his words ensnare,
Entangling the doers of wrong
By lassoing them in song.
Hugo del Mar
July 13, 2004
Rating: 
Summary: This Little Volume Grows On You!
Review: When I first read this little volume through, my first reaction was that this was not much ado about even less. Then upon reflection-- and after I called a couple of friends and read some of my favorite little ditties to them-- the book began to grow on me. Now when I see Mr. Bush stumping-- if that's what he is doing-- or giving sound bites, Mr. Trillin's doggerel comes to mind and makes me smile. For example, when Kerry announced that Edwards would be his running mate in November, the current occupant of the White House, when asked to compare Mr. Edwards with Mr. Cheney, responded quicker than A Texas tornado, "Dick Cheney can be President." But Mr. Trillin calls Mr. Cheney "Nanny Dick" and concludes in another little poem that the current VP only holds his head at an angle when he is lying-- which is all of the time. Wolfowitz and his crowd, those who were hell-bent on getting the U. S. into war, are called "Sissy Hawks." After all most of them didn't wear the uniform. (Weekend soldiers don't count.) Condoleezza Rice's name is always followed with "Mushroom Cloud" in parentheses. While Mr. Trillin takes most of his shots-- and he has tremendously good aim-- at Bush and his administration, the Democrats get zapped a few times too. One of the saddest poems in this entire volume is one for the Democrats: "The Loyal Opposition." "The Senate Democrats sat mum/Like doves afraid to coo./So history will soon record/This war as their war too." Then there's "A Silver-Lining View of George Bush's Not Attending Military Funerals, Lest He Become Associated with Bad News": At least there's no Bush eulogy/On why they had to die./It's better that they're laid to rest/Without another lie." (Notice that the titles are often practically as long as the poems, themselves.)Since 1990, Mr. Trillin apparently has written a poem each week on the news. The last one in this slender volume is dated April 19, 2004. Some of his efforts don't work very well as poems, hardly rhyming, something that these sorts of poems must do in order to be successful. (Ogden Nash's reputation will not be tarnished by this book.) What we do have here are thoughtful comments by a good and funny writer on the current state of the United States as he sees it.
Rating: 
Summary: Calin who?
Review: Who in the hell is Calin Trillin!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Never averse to a verse
Review: Whose words these are I think I know,
It's Trillin.... and his pen doth flow!
He writes with humor, never mean,
His knife sticks in and pulls out clean. We hear of Bush, the younger one,
(Who really seems to be dim son.)
And Rummy, Ashcroft, Perle and Rice
And Cheney, who's the nation's vice. The neo-cons do Cal amaze
As to abortion, prayer and gays.
The author offers in each section
A true, poetic "right" rejection. I highly recommend this book,
(You'll love our writer's jab and hook!)
He'll make of you a lifetime pal,
This funny, punny, comic-Cal.
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