Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days

This varied anthology began as a blog—the editors sent out a call to poets asking them to write original poems on an assigned day during the critical first 100 days of Obama's presidency, responding somehow to the day's news; the results were published daily online. The book that the blog became begins with Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem (“Say it plain: that many have died for this day”) and continues with 99 other pieces by poets young and old, including Cornelius Eady, David Lehman, and Mark Doty. The poems range from the slyly earnest (“I know/ it's hard to believe but/ the new president said science,” writes Matthew Rohrer), the downright funny (“I have 'invented' and am promoting a neologism/ for the perineum: the boyband,” writes Mark Bibbins in a poem you'll have to read to learn how it's tied to Obama), the hopeful (“I think I feel my limbs again,” says Brenda Shaughnessy) to, of course, the highly politicized, as in Thomas Sayers Ellis's “First Grade, All Over Again”: “This is not something/ the minority expects the majority/ to accept, reconciliation.” While newer poetry readers might not recognize all the names, there's something here for everyone. (Apr.)