peace_sonnet

Unrhymed Peace Sonnet

Who are the Good Guys now? Who are the bad?

Nobody's wearing Stetsons, black or white.

Each has a history of evil deeds:

one individual, one centuries

of rapine and ideals. It's almost noon.

One leader straps on bombs. The armies mass.

We'll blow that s.o.b. to kingdom come,

everyone thinks; bring on Armageddon!

Yosemite Sam, frustrated and enraged,

jumps up and down, shooting holes in the clouds.

And Africa is dying out, of AIDS.

Why the hell doesn't the moving finger write?

What the hell are you waiting for, my God?

Why don't you tell those bastards not to fight?

For Pete's sake, send an angel! Burn a bush!

Nelson's book, The Homeplace, was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award. The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize, and won the 1998 Poet's Prize. Her most recent work, Carver: A Life in Poems, movingly tells the story of botanist and inventor George Washington Carver in verse.

Nelson's honors include two Pushcart Prizes, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Artist Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, and most recently, a Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 1978, she has taught at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she is a professor of English.

Vocab:

SStetson – trade mark, wide-brimmed hat; rapine – plunder; s.o.b. – son of a bitch; Armageddon -Bible. The scene of a final battle between the forces of good and evil; Pete – St. Peter (a person starts to say "For God's Sake" and says "For Pete's Sake" instead)

Yosemite Sam: Whether playing a buccaneer, Arabian knight or the roughest, toughest, meanest, old prospector west of the Pecos, Yosemite Sam's slapstick physical humor always sets his audiences laughing. This rootin', tootin', six gun shootin', varmit-huntin' wild man of the west believes in his own innate superiority and charges his way into one misadventure after another -- and as loudly as possible. The only thing shorter than the fuse on his temper is Yosemite Sam himself and this walking keg of dynamite is always ready for action.
From his ten gallon hat to his fire red mustache, Yosemite Sam is the most flamboyant of all Bugs Bunny's adversaries. But the funniest thing about Yosemite Sam is that he has absolutely no sense of humor which makes him the perfect foil, or fool, for Bugs Bunny.

Marilyn Nelson, of Storrs, was appointed State Poet Laureate by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts on June 28, 2001. She will serve a five-year term in the honorary position, which was created by the General Assembly to recognize a Connecticut poet of the highest distinction. She succeeds Leo Connellan, and his predecessor, James Merrill.

Marilyn Nelson is the author of six books of poetry, two children's collections, and several chapbooks. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and literary collections. She has been described as "a poet of stunning power, able to bring alive the most rarified and subtle of experiences."