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Poet's Choice

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Fool and scoundrel guide the State.

Peace is whore to Greed and Hate.

Nowhere may I turn to flee:

Action is security.

Treading change with savage heel,

We must live or die by steel.

In one of the recurring turns of poetry, it sometimes draws energy from its deepest, ancient roots in order to shout warning at the defects or blindnesses of a present moment.

(Charles Bernstein's poem "The Ballad of the Girly Man" is from his book "Girly Man." Univ. of Chicago. Copyright 2006 by Charles Bernstein.Yvor Winters's poem "Before Disaster" can be found in "Yvor Winters: Selected Poems," edited by Thom Gunn. Library of America. Copyright 2003 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.)

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