It's Not Unusual: Trump Falls Into Republican Trend, Lacks Inaugural Poet

According to the Atlantic, Donald Trump (for a so-called outsider) isn't breaking party lines when it comes to poetry. The newly-minted President hasn't invited a poet to speak at his inauguration, like all of the Republicans who came before. Atlantic's Spencer Kornhaber writes, "The lack of poetry may seem like a break with precedent, or it may seem especially telling given news that Trump intends to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. But it’s not so unprecedented. Only five poets have recited their work at swearing-in ceremonies, each for Democratic presidents: Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama. (Jimmy Carter had a reading by James Dickey at an inaugural gala)." Let's pick up there:

But in that fact alone—the fact of presidential poetry as a partisan tradition—is a reminder of America’s cultural divides. In the weeks after the election, many Americans turned to poetry for guidance and comfort, as my colleague Megan Garber has chronicled. Now, Leslie Lawrence at WBUR’s website suggests that anyone yearning for some verse on Inauguration Day might want to revisit the works of Walt Whitman. (From Song of Myself: “Whoever degrades another degrades me.”)

Does Donald Trump have a favorite poem? If so, he doesn’t appear to have told told anyone about it publicly. The closest thing might be Oscar Brown Jr.’s lyrics to Al Wilson’s 1960s R&B song “The Snake.”

Continue at the Atlantic.