Facts Are Under Assault in 2020
- Politifact website
“Facts and Anti-Facts”
- The world is not a poem – John Williams, from the novel, Augustus
Not a poem in the way a sunset is a poem
or a sunrise, or even in the way
a violent thunderstorm can
invade you like Yeats’, The Second Coming.
No, lately the world is more like
a surreal documentary:
no room for poetry,
the news as science-fiction,
full of facts and anti-facts
and difficult to tell which is which.
But smash them together,
and they both disappear.Poem recommended by:
Angie Trudell Vasquez
Madison Poet Laureate, Madison Public Library Poet-in-Residence
Why I chose this poem:
Because the truth matters and we have to seek it out as humans. Ed Werstein’s poems in this collection are so important for these times, and for all Wisconsinites. Our local Madison history is in these pages and poems. I like to think of poets as truth-tellers. This poem asks some big questions, poetry can do that, make you think, challenge your thought patterns.
Ed is the regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and lives in Milwaukee.
