- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: Random House (Jun 1 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400062888
- ISBN-13: 978-1400062881
- Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 1.7 x 18.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#583,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Books > Entertainment > Humour > Limericks & Humourous Verse
- #95 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Limericks & Humourous Verse
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
There's nothing for improving a satirist's form like having a good target. Case in point: New Yorker regular Trillin, whose earlier verse sampler, Deadline Poet (1994), was mostly less amusing than last year's political cartoons. The present presidential administration, led as it is by the least articulate politician in living memory (as Trillin notes, "W" is no Dan Quayle), seems heaven sent for satire, however, and Trillin rises to its benison. In 12 topical sections, each including a prose page of "backgrounding," as the bureaucrats say, he offers couplets, quatrains, and songs on the Bush-Cheney ticket (remember that movie The Nanny?); the 2000 campaign; the "supporting cast" (from Ashcroft to Boykin to Powell); the administration's corporate-criminal and lobbyist pals; and the many facets of the War against Terrorism, Saddam Hussein, the Axis of Evil, . . . whatever. Trillin so wryly yet accurately reflects the deep feelings of so many Americans that his rhymes may come to constitute a critical introduction for students of these times. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Does the Bush Administration sound any better in rhyme? In this biting array of verse, it at least sounds funnier. Calvin Trillin employs everything from a Gilbert and Sullivan style, for describing George Bush’s rescue in the South Carolina primary by the Christian Right (“I am, when all is said and done, a Robertson Republican”), to a bilingual approach, when commenting on the President’s casual acknowledgment, after months of trying to persuade the nation otherwise, that there was never any evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11: “The Web may say, or maybe Lexis-Nexis / If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas.”
Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but with the people around him—Supreme Commander Karl Rove and Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Nanny Dick Cheney (“One mystery I’ve tried to disentangle: / Why Cheney’s head is always at an angle . . .”) The armchair warriors Trillin refers to as the Sissy Hawk Brigade are celebrated in such poems as “Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?” and “A Sissy Hawk Cheer” (“All-out war is still our druthers— / Fiercely fought, and fought by others.”).
Trillin may never be poet laureate—certainly not while George W. Bush is in office—but his wit and his political insight produce what has been called “doggerel for the ages.”
Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but with the people around him—Supreme Commander Karl Rove and Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Nanny Dick Cheney (“One mystery I’ve tried to disentangle: / Why Cheney’s head is always at an angle . . .”) The armchair warriors Trillin refers to as the Sissy Hawk Brigade are celebrated in such poems as “Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?” and “A Sissy Hawk Cheer” (“All-out war is still our druthers— / Fiercely fought, and fought by others.”).
Trillin may never be poet laureate—certainly not while George W. Bush is in office—but his wit and his political insight produce what has been called “doggerel for the ages.”
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First Sentence
The fact that those marks at Yale got him into Harvard Business School is yet another reminder of which class of Americans has always benefited from the original affirmative action program. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
The fact that those marks at Yale got him into Harvard Business School is yet another reminder of which class of Americans has always benefited from the original affirmative action program. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Funny despite which side of the fence you're on,
By A Customer
This review is from: Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (Hardcover)
With all the books out on Kerry and Bush and yada, yada, yada, I was so glad to see one that actually made me laugh. Man, will I be glad when this election is over so we can all get back to living! OBLIVIOUSLY ON HE SAILS is a funny, funny book, and not at all mean-spirited as I thought it would be. It's the way we, as a country, USED to look at candidates and poke fun--not in a scathing way, but in a way that was both humorous and enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever romp and hope you will too-regardless of your political persuasion. Also read two other very good books recently, neither of which (thank God) has anything to do with politics: TEN BIG ONES was the first, and the second was THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Calin who?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (Hardcover)
Who in the hell is Calin Trillin!!!!!!!!!
4.0 out of 5 stars
This Little Volume Grows On You!,
By
This review is from: Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (Hardcover)
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.
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