Day of Doom: Get Ready

Jul25

The Day of Doom, a quintessentially Puritan poem of over 200 eight-line stanzas vividly describing Judgment Day and the torments awaiting sinners in Hell, was the first book of poetry printed in the American Colonies and the first American bestseller. Its author, Michael Wigglesworth, graduated from Harvard in 1651 and served the town of Malden, Mass., as minister and physician. The day of doom is the foundation of any collection of early American literature, yet it is also one of the legendary rarities of early American printing. Only one fragmentary copy survives of the first edition, printed in Cambridge, Mass., ca. 1662, and only four fragmentary copies of the second edition of 1666.

This Just In: We Welcome The Day of Doom!

I will be posting this edifying New England poem here at ConnectHook soon.

I discovered it in this excellent anthology I purchased recently:

S.A. in Perspective

Jul22

Sandalistas

Jul22

You posed yourselves (in radical English)
with fellow-travelers on the barricades.
recalling bygone barrio fusillades
though you speak only red diaper Spanish…
Beholding the party cooperative
where gringo tourists are shown Cuban truth,
you cherished the lies of your leftist youth,
half-informed, predictably progressive.
Stuffed full of radicalized rice and beans,
flatulent, dreaming of ignoble Che
you charmed the sultry proletarian queens.
In your new Guayabera, bonafide,
you hailed the revolutionary day;
pale thorn in the suffering People’s side…