These poems read as if they were written in response to recent political events. Not so. Almost all of them were written years ago, some over half a century ago, which shows the country has been in the same kinds of trouble for a long time. There are jingles here, ironic monologues, epigrams, sonnets, and stories. They are united by the author's awareness of his situation: The world I'm in is not the one I knew when I was 21 in '52