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"Nowadays, you can't turn on the TV without some talking head telling you about the economy. Yet, in a world overrun by 'analysts,' only one man has the guts, the brains, and, quite frankly, the poetry to put it all in perspective.That man is Michael Silverstein... Silverstein is a true intellectual." — Gersh Kuntzman, The New York Post
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Carl Sandburg was a second rate Walt Whitman. But then, so are a lot of other pretty good American poets. And Sandburg, at least, had the good sense to focus his big shoulder and brawling Whitmanesque free verse style on a single geographic locale, Chicago. He managed to rise high in this country’s cultural pantheon in part because Chicago is a town that honors those that honor its own uniqueness—even a poet who began a work about his home town with the line: Hog Butcher to the world... Oddly, though, Sandburg’s best-known poem, a minor effort titled "Fog," isn’t Chicago-specific. This poem’s opening lines are also flagrantly flawed: The fog comes in As someone who has both experienced fog and owns a cat, I can say flat out that the latter doesn’t come in like the former. Fog is stealthy and diffuse. Our cat, Rambo, struts around the house in a bumptious, proprietary manner devoid of stealth, and when she deigns to settle on a lap, is anything but diffuse. Other important distinctions might be made between cat feet and fog. Rather than do so here, however, I offer instead two Wall Street versions of Sandburg’s ‘Fog’—’Fed’ and ‘Mob.’ Both employ Fog’s verse pattern but with new, market-oriented lyrics. FedThe Fed must keep ********** MobThe mob is sure *********** |
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