Ken Waldman

Trump Sonnets: Volume 3 Ken Waldman The International edition

Poetry. Late 2016, immediately after the U. S. Presidential election, Ken Waldman wrote TRUMP SONNETS: VOLUME 1, subtitled THE FIRST 50 DAYS. Veteran poet and critic, Grace Cavalieri, wrote: Good thing we have the First Amendment or this Dude would be an ex pat. Funny and smart though. The collection quickly went through an initial printing as Waldman wrote a sequel, subtitled 33 COMMENTARIES, 33 DREAMS. Now Waldman has written the next in the series, subtitled THE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, with poems from the perspective of 72 countries. This new collection begins in Puerto Rico, includes voices from throughout the Americas, then to Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, to Africa, to the Far East, and then back to Europe, before a seven-poem epilogue set in the USA, the final one imagining 14 residents from Washington D. C. weighing in. The poems range from funny (an Aussie pities the Americans, and compares their president to an elderly kangaroo making a mad clatter) to grim (a Swede muses on the Doomsday Clock's advance toward midnight) to beyond sad (a six-year-old Nicaraguan explains what it's like to be separated from parents). And yet it's no surprise that a Russian, an Israeli, a Hungarian, and others find words of praise. The three books of TRUMP SONNETS are a singular achievement. If you think Donald Trump is satire-proof, think again. And VOLUME 3 has taken the project further. Ken Waldman and his publisher, Ridgeway Press, successfully raised money for this book through a Kickstarter campaign. It's a most deserving project in this historic era.