Can the Poet Populist Be Recalled?
In November, the Cambridge Arts Council selected Peter Payack at the city’s first Poet Populist. Aside from the Soviet-sounding title, the Poet Populist gets a $1,000 stipend and gets to make public appearances. Apparently, the title also gets your work published in the Cambridge Chronicle.
Payack’s poem is titled “Santa and the Ho-Ho-Ho Zone.” As you can imagine, it only gets worse.
In the not-distant future
because of this bind,
would Santa’s sled fly
for the very last time?
Cries of the children
came from far and wide:
“Please stop this warming
before the Earth dies!”
That wouldn’t happen. Even the evolved children of Cambridge are primarily worried about whether Santa will put a Wii under their tree. If the children cried out anything, it would be begging for Santa to somehow engineer a pontoon sleigh for the post-ice cap world so they can still get their loot.
However, it’s an almost-perfect sendup of Cambridge culture. The only thing it’s missing is a mention of the Boy Scouts.