Booknote: The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump

Robert Sears, The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2017.  ISBN: 978-1-78689-227-0.

Genre: poetry
Subgenre: political satire, celebrities
Format: Hardcover
Source: Discards shelf at Hutchins Library, Berea College

This book was left on the discards shelf at my workplace library by some unknown patron. It is another entry in the gimmick humor about Donald Trump genre. The author, Rob Sears, has scoured and searched for everything and anything Trump has said and written, from tweets to transcripts and other texts, to "discover" that Trump has a poetic side after all. In other words, he took Trump's lines from various sources to create poems that sound just like Trump because every line is Trump's words.

It is a good effort by the author overall, but the quality of the poems varies. Some are very good and amusing, others not so much. In addition, given what we know now the book can be both amusing and depressing.

For the unbeliever or Trump fan who will gripe about this, every stanza and line is fully documented. Yes, Trump said and/or wrote or tweeted every word in the poems, and they all have source citations. This documentation is a strength of the book. Sears just reorganized a few of those many lines to "find" Trump's sensitive and moving poetry. Is it satire? Well, yes and no.

Overall, the book was OK for me. This is mainly because the poetry quality can be hit or miss. Your mileage may vary. The book is going back to the discard shelf now that I am done reading it.

2 out of 5 stars.