My presidential library, so far

I update my presidential library with books about No. 45. 

When my father died, my four brothers and I divided up the books in his library. He liked history, especially presidential history. The core of the library were books dissecting presidencies from Washington to Bush the Elder. He didn't much care for Clinton and he died 16 months into the first term of Bush the Younger. His books represented the first 40 or so.

The books I hauled from Florida to Wyoming include Grant's autobiography, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Age of Jackson," David McCullough's Big Book of "Truman, " and Eric Larrabee's "Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants & Their War." My father never reached lieutenant status but he was in "their war" as were millions of other GIs. This was a point of pride to him and his family. He never fired on Roosevelt and Truman, possibly because they were his commanders in chief during his army years. He may have voted for them both, although he never said. He did vote for JFK. He had a history of voting for Democrats until the Southern Strategy reached into the Sunshine State and corralled former Dems for Nixon. 

My father was conservative and a reader. I have some of his books although they are dwarfed by my fiction library which, I swear, I am finding other homes for. At the library, I could scan entire shelves of books about presidents, some of them bordering on hagiography and others Hunter Thompson gonzo. I do not know how many books have already been written about the current resident of the White House. I know that some day, they mighty fill entire libraries, if there are libraries in the future, or if there is a future. 

I've already started my Trump library.  So far, it includes three volumes: "Trump Sonnets I, II, and III" by Ken Waldman and "Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance" by Paul Fericano. Waldman's Trump books are published by M.L. Liebler's Ridgeway Press of Michigan. Fericano's publishers are Poems-For-All Press/YU News Service. 

Waldman, a traveling poet who splits time between Alaska and Louisiana,  began writing his sonnets the day after the 2016 election. He thought he might write one book, maybe two, but that would be it, boom, we'd recover our sanity as a nation and remove the pretender. Then came the third book and, soon, the fourth volume will hit the shelves. Waldman is as flummoxed as the rest of us. He has other books of poetry and prose. He also plays a mean fiddle and has recorded several CDs. He just came through town on his way to teach elementary students in Fort Collins. He reads from the Trump books but he has to carefully discern his audiences, wondering if he will get laughs or rotten tomatoes (or worse).

In his third volume, Waldman adopts the POV of a litany of the world's people: Here's a sample sonnet:

A Spaniard
On the bus one day I met a tourist
and she seemed perfectly reasonable.
She called her president an unstable
gangster, which didn't seem wrong. She listed
her grievances and felt quite sad. She missed
the welcome she once received. The label
American dogged her now. Terrible,
she said, how people spit, how they'd insist
she was like him, that all Americans
were just like him, too, or worse. We're all friends,
she said to me. I had to look away.
I want nothing to do with her country,
or anyone from it. Her president
is a part of her. He's no accident.

Anyone from the U.S. who's traveled overseas lately, especially those who despise Trump, have run into the same thing. You may do your best to distance yourself from him, but the fact remains: Trump is US. He represents us (and the U.S.) to the world. That may be the most horrible part of this -- Trump is an American.

Fericano, a San Francisco poet and satirist, knows his literature, his history and his Trump. He combines the two in humorous and scathing ways. He parodies William Carlos Williams's famous (and much mocked) poem "The Red Wheelbarrow."

So much offends
about 

an orange peel
barrel 

filled with waste
water 

inside the white
house

Parody is tricky. The reader has to know something about the source or the power is lost. To assist, Fericano includes a "Notes" section in the back of the book. If you're a bit confused by "Humphrey Bogart Tries to Register at Trump University," the author refers you to Gold Hat's "stinking badges" lines to Bogie in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Watch the movie and return to read the poem. You'll get it. For a poet's take on the book, go to Jack Foley's review in the September "Poetry Flash," the locus of the Bay Area's poetry culture. Here's a shout-out to Flash's publisher, the indomitable Joyce Jenkins. 

So I have shelved my Trump books among ones about The Father of Our Country and The Man Who Led Us Through the Most Destructive War in Human History. Trump looks a little puny up there among the giants of history. But who knows? Number 45 may have his moment. He may surprise us yet with daring leadership skills and a presidential tenor that will ring down through the ages.

And this week, I will donate all of my books to the library bookstore and never think about them again. 

Fat chance.