Here’s an opportunity to relive your high-school poetry classes.

First Lady Michelle Obama has scheduled a poetry evening for Wednesday, and she’s invited several poets, including a successful Chicago poet and rapper, Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA “Common.” However, Lynn is quite controversial, in part because his poetry includes threats to shoot police and at least one passage calling for the “burn[ing]” of then-President George W. Bush.

Back in 2003, First Lady Laura Bush held a poetry evening, and she invited several poets to reprise the work of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Although none of those poets had urged violence against a president, Bush canceled the event after left-of-center poets protested and threatened to disrupt the event.

Here’s a sample of Dickinson’s work that could have been presented at Bush’s event:

I’m nobody! Who are you? I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

Here’s a sample of Common’s work, transcribed from a 2007 video with 837,613 viewers on YouTube. Students, please compare and contrast the two poems. You’ll get extra credit for counting the death threats. There is no extra credit for identifying spelling errors. By the way, ‘Uzi’ is slang for a compact machine gun:

A Letter to the Law Dem boy wanna talk… [indistinguishable] Whatcha gon do if ya got one gun? I sing a song for the hero unsung with faces on the mural of the revolution No looking back cos’ in back is what’s done Tell the preacher, God got more than one son Tell the law, my Uzi weighs a ton I walk like a warrior, from them I won’t run On the streets, they try to beat us like a drum In Cincinnati, another brother hung A guinea won’t see the sun with his family stung They want us to hold justice but you handed me none The same they did to Kobe and Michael Jackson make them the main attraction Turn around and attack them Black gem in the rough You’re rugged enough Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun I got the black strap to make the cops run They watching me, I’m watching them Them dick boys got a lock of cock in them My people on the block got a lot of pok* in them and when we roll together we be rocking them to sleep No time for that, because there’s things to be done Stay true to what I do so the youth dream come from project building Seeing a fiend being hung With that happening, why they messing with Saddam? Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button Killing over oil and grease no weapons of destruction How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one The government’s a g-unit and they might buck young black people Black people In the urban area one I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun. Peace, ya’ll.”

The First Lady’s office did not return a call from TheDC.

*Commenter notes this may be “Pac,” as in Tupac Shakur



See the video: