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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day!

I'm so excited today, I'm having trouble typing. It will be a long time (forever, it seems, after all this coffee I've been drinking) before we will know the results of today's historical election. To help pass the time, check out these places to get your fill of election thoughts with a somewhat literary tinge.

-Jeff Biggers offers some election day poetry at The Huffington Post.
-MSNBC presents First Person: voters around the country share their first-hand experiences at the polls.
-Five fiction writers imagine the day after the election at The Guardian.
-Raking up "the words and phrases that have floated like autumn leaves through the political ether this fall."
-Check out the new issue of FENCE.
-Robert Pinsky revisits Walt Whitman's poem, "Election Day" for the Boston Globe. Hear Pinsky read and discuss the poem at NPR.org.

And, a poem...

The Approaching Hour
by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems, Volume II, 1939-1962)

You Communists and Republicans!
all you Germans and Frenchmen!
you corpses and quickeners!
The stars are about to melt
and fall on you in tears.

Get ready! Get ready!
you Papists and Protestants!
you whores and you virtuous!
The moon will be bread
and drop presently into your baskets.

Friends and those who despise
and detest us!
Adventists and those who believe
nothing!
Get ready for the awakening.

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