Tim Parise

Children of Plutus Tim Parise

Reviving and updating the eighteenth-century tradition of political verse satire, Children of Plutus serves up the ironies, contradictions, and theatrics of President Donald Trump and his administration within the genre's usual framing narrative of classical mythology. Plutus, god of wealth, temporarily hibernating on the former planet dedicated to his father, Pluto, is awakened by a very expensive NASA spacecraft, and interprets it as an offering made by the American people. In a gesture of tongue-in-cheek recognition of their reverence for wealth, he grants them a plutocrat for their chief executive, and dispatches a few of his mortal minions to support this novus homo. One by one, the poem reviews the abilities of these children of Plutus in detail, along with their condensed foibles, desires, and fears--mostly fears. The cast of characters includes not only Mr. Trump and his family, but also Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Mike Pence, as well as brief appearances by Paul Ryan, John McCain, Dana Rohrabacher, John Lewis, and Jared Polis.