History Repeats Itself

by Catherine Giordano

It’s been two months now since I completed my “News Print Poetry 2012” project. I have been noticing how history repeats itself.

It’s been kind of uncanny.  I will see something in the news and it reminds me of a news pront poem that I did last year.  It often turns out that I wrote that poem exactly or almost exactly a years ago.

It validates the idea behind my project.  I have chronicled a year of history. The echoes of that history still reverberate.

I wonder if those echoes will still reverberate in five years. In ten years.

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State of the Union Focus

Our unfinished task:

Restore the basic bargain

that built this country—

the idea

that if you work hard,

if you meet your responsibilities,

you can get ahead,

no matter where you come from,

no matter what you look like,

no matter who you love.

Our unfinished task:

Make sure that government works

on behalf of the many,

not just the few.

Barack Obama’s speeches are so poetic that I have to do very little to them to transform them into a poem.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

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Winter Storm Nemo and Other Extreme Weather

I’ve been watching the news on TV.  It’s filled with reports about the blizzard hitting the North East.  They are saying this my be the worst blizzard ever.  It reminded me of another theme of my news print poems for 2012—extreme weather.

Check out these poems.

03/04/12          Twisters Wrath

06/30/12         Colorado Wildfires

07/10/12         Heat Wave

09/31/12         Isaac

10/30/12        Sandy Slams     

Is there anybody left who still denies that global warming is real and that it is causing extreme weather?.                   

A weather map of Winter Storm Nemo--it's huge. 

Prescient Poems

by Catherine Giordano

As I collect all the 2012 news print poems and format my book I see certain themes arise for the year. One of them obviously is the election—an easily predicted theme.

A less predictable theme is gun control and mass shootings. 

I did a couple of poems about gun control in June and July.

            June 1, 2012                         Guns

 July 14, 2012                        Gaps and Guns

And then the mass shootings started to happen.  As I did the first poem, I never imagined how many more I would be doing on this topic. Four in all, culminating with the most horrific, the Newtown massacre.  

            July 21, 2012                        Terror Unfolds in Colorado

 August 8, 2012                     Sikh Killings

            August 25, 2012                   Empire State Gunman     

            December 15, 2012             A Teary Obama (About Newtown)

Each time I called for gun control laws.  I’m thinking about their old protest song we used to sing about war, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”  The refrain is: “When will they ever learn?  When will they every learn?

Update 09/17/13: Today I have to update the list for the Navy Yard Shooting.

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