Political Poetry, Political Novel — US, Middle East, Mexico

Politics in Art by Hank Kalet — the Middle East and political poetry:

“We live in an age when it’s hard / to write about basic things / like a kiss or eating cheese,” Mr. Weiseltier writes in “Cheese.”

The accumulation of small details in his poems is set against the larger world of violence, one that perpetuates itself, violence begetting violence, a cycle that he refuses to fall into – “don’t dare say / that my blood permits you to justify your wrongs.”

 In 2020, Politics as Unusual  — review by Yvonne Zipp

Carlos Fuentes, perhaps Mexico’s greatest living writer, has created a corrosive satire [the novel, The Eagle’s Throne] set in 2020. The Mexican president has angered the United States by denouncing its invasion of Colombia. In retaliation, US President Condoleezza Rice has wiped out Mexico’s communication systems, cutting the country off from the rest of the world. (Even the carrier pigeons have been poisoned.)