For months now I have listened to and read the words spoken by Donald Trump. I have been fascinated by his use of simple words, short sentences, and repetition. It finally hit me today that he has been creating poetry extemporaneously throughout the campaign. It’s not traditional rhyming couplets; it’s more a free-form stream of consciousness poetry.
For example, in response to a question about his aggressive attacking responses to perceived insults, he composed the following poem which I have entitled:
I Will Counter-Attack
I don’t feel I insult people.
I don’t feel I insult people.
I try and get to the facts, and
I don’t feel I insult people.
Now, if I’m insulted
I will counter-attack, but
I don’t feel like I insult people.
I don’t want to do that.
But, if I’m attacked,
I will counter-attack.
Simple words and simple declarative sentences, easy for his supporters to comprehend. And repetition, used to convince his supporters that what he is spouting is the truth and that justifies his abominable behavior: “insult … counter-attack, insult … counter-attack.”
A total of fifty-four words in six sentences. The predominant word, of course is: I or I’m – repeated 14 times, in a 54-word Ode to Aggression. Five other words are used 21 times.
In total he uses only 21 different words. Only 3 of which are multi-syllabic, the three words he wants to emphasize: insult, attack, people.
He manages to convey so much, so simply, and with so little. He knows his audience and that simple words repeated often will help them grasp and believe what he has to say.
The only way this poem could be more successful would be if it were set to music, preferably church music.
But he has other, more expansive poetry, including the following epic poem, which I have entitled:
The Four Prisoners (or Is It Three)
Look, having nuclear—
my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer,
Dr. John Trump at MIT;
good genes, very good genes,
OK, very smart,
the Wharton School of Finance,
very good, very smart
—you know, if you're a conservative Republican,
if I were a liberal,
if, like, OK,
if I ran as a liberal Democrat,
they would say
I'm one of the smartest people
anywhere in the world
—it's true!—
but when you're a conservative Republican
they try—oh, do they do a number—
that's why I always start off:
Went to Wharton,
was a good student,
went there,
went there,
did this,
built a fortune—
you know I have to
give my like credentials all the time,
because we're a little disadvantaged—
but you look at the nuclear deal,
the thing that really bothers me—
it would have been so easy,
and it's not as important as these lives are
(nuclear is powerful;
my uncle explained that to me
many, many years ago,
the power and that was 35 years ago;
he would explain the power of
what's going to happen
and he was right—who would have thought?),
but when you look
at what's going on with the four prisoners—
now it used to be three,
now it's four—
but when it was three and even now,
I would have said
it's all in the messenger;
fellas, and it is fellas because,
you know, they don't,
they haven't figured
that the women
are smarter right now
than the men,
so, you know,
it's gonna take them about another 150 years—
but the Persians are great negotiators,
the Iranians are great negotiators,
so, and they,
they just killed,
they just killed us.
This poem may be his greatest epic poem. It was delivered in a single sentence, all 280+ words, with hardly a breath taken. The poem covers a wide array of topics: a brief biographic glance at his education and GREAT intelligence, with a shout-out to his uncle and the genes responsible for his brilliance; he wistfully reminds us all that his brilliance has gone unrecognized because, of course, as everyone knows, only liberal Democrats are ever recognized for their intelligence.
He then finds his way back to the main theme of the poem: nuclear, prisoners, Persians and Iranians. The allusion to Persians allows him to link his epic to the classic poetry of the Fertile Crescent, illustrating that he knows that Iranians used to be called by another name. In the final stanza he mentions the prisoners, those four guys, who used to be three, but now four, and emphasizes they are all men (“fellas”), because they (the Persians, now Iranians) don’t recognize that women are now smarter than men. Finally, he bemoans the fact that the Persians, like the Iranians, have used their great negotiating skills to defeat us: “they just killed us.”
The underlying message, delivered so adroitly, if not succinctly, is that that this will never happen if a man of his brilliance and negotiating skills is elected president instead of Hillary.
Amazing, and it took only 280 words.