All day rain. Never heavy, but never ending. The ground is wet.

Sometimes a quiet, rainy Sunday feels just right—allowing for simple pastimes like reading and writing, sewing, practicing a musical instrument, taking a nap. For some reason, the television has not been on for weeks, perhaps because of news-weariness, perhaps because we have good books at hand and in the queue. For some reason, having the TV off right now feels just right.

“Who Says Trump and Poetry Are Incompatible?”

We know a poem can be maniacal, the best ones
Always unpredictable. Don’t poets sometimes rave?

Pound for example: profound, but mad as the Hatter,
And maybe a traitor. As for the tweets, if Dylan Thomas
Were still with us, might not he tweet his late-night sullen art?

Perhaps only poetry, after prose has failed us,
Is brave and big enough for this Trumpian time.

Think of Wordsworth, The world is too much with us,
Or Arnold: And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Dickinson would tell us to turn the TV off, the phone
And iPad too: The Soul selects her own Society.
Did Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock foretell our president
Come whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbling…

But if I had to choose one poem to give to him,
I’d give him Angelou: You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

—from the New York Times