Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse

In his latest laugh-out-loud book of political verse, Calvin Trillin provides a riotous depiction of the 2012 presidential election campaign.   Dogfight is a narrative poem interrupted regularly by other poems and occasionally by what the author calls a pause for prose (?Callista Gingrich, Aware That Her Husband Has Cheated On and Then Left Two Wives Who Had Serious Illnesses, Tries Desperately to Make Light of a Bad Cough?). With the same barbed wit he displayed in the bestsellers Deciding the Next Decider, Obliviously On He Sails, and A Heckuva Job, America?s deadline poet trains his sights on the Tea Party (?These folks were quick to vocally condemn/All handouts but the ones that went to them?) and the slapstick field of contenders for the Republican nomination (?Though first-tier candidates were mostly out,/Republicans were asking, ?What about/The second tier or what about the third?/Has nothing from those other tiers been heard??). There is an ode to Michele Bachmann, sung to the tune of a Beatles classic (?Michele, our belle/Thinks that gays will all be sent to hell?) and passages on the exit of candidates like Herman Cain (?Although his patter in debates could tickle,/Cain?s pool of knowledge seemed less pool than trickle?) and Rick Santorum (?The race will miss the purity/That you alone endow./We?ll never find another man/Who?s holier than thou.?)   On its way to the November 6 finale, Trillin?s narrative takes us through such highlights as the January caucuses in frigid Iowa (?To listen to long speeches is your duty,/And getting there could freeze off your patootie?), the Republican convention (?It seemed like Clint, his chair, and their vignette/Had wandered in from some adjoining set?), and Mitt Romney?s secretly recorded ?47 percent? speech, which inspired the ?I Got the Mitt Thinks I?m a Moocher, a Taker not a Maker, Blues.?