His power, his passion, is the fabric of America
with the crown with which his mother has crowned him,
He is beholden to no one but we the people, how refreshing
My heart went out when he spoke.
and there, over his head, he’ll be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower
I called him, but he didn’t answer
And Donald Trump is the right one to do that.
I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.
He has spent his life looking up and
its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden,
They didn’t want to talk about these issues until he brought ‘em up.
My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies.
– Odes generated by the Python program I wrote, combining text from Sarah Palin’s Trump endorsement speech with the Bible’s Song of Solomon
Last week, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin delivered a fiery, meandering speech endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential bid. The speech has been described as everything from “post-apocalyptic poetry” to performance art. Her praise for Trump takes the form of a kind of bizarre ode (to capitalism? to the private sector? IDK). To me, Palin’s odd locutions read as both erotica and sermon.
The blending of the sexual and the spiritual in this way is nothing new. The Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is a book of scripture that appears in the Old Testament. Scripturally, the book is distinct in its celebration of sexual love. At times erotic, the text takes the form of two lovers talking about their love and desire for one another. Jewish tradition interprets the book as symbolic of the relationship between God and Israel; Christians read it as an allegory for Christ and His church.
All of this got me thinking. For this week’s assignment, we were to write a program in Python that would mimic a function that could be performed on the command line. I decided to write a program in Python that would create a “mashup” of the two texts: Palin’s endorsement speech and Song of Solomon.
The program I wrote searches two texts for lines that contain the words “he” or “his” (lowercase and uppercase). It then randomly selects lines from those lines and generates a simple poem: an ode. In this way, it’s mimicking the grep UNIX command.
The program requires two inputs, both .txt files. The .txt files would ideally take the form of odes, since the words my program is looking for are “he” and “his,” but the program can work with any texts. The output is a 6-line poem that simply alternates between the two texts. If there is a text A and a text B the format would be as follows: A/B/A/B/A/B. For example:
“Trump and his, uh, uh, uh, Trumpeters, they’re not conservative enough.”
in the day of his weddings, in the day of the gladness
He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge.
then I was in his eyes like one who found peace.
And he tells us Joe six packs, he said, “You know, I’ve worked very, very hard.
I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.
Here’s the code I wrote in Python:
Okay, here’s one more:
He looks in at the windows. He glances through the lattice.
But he didn’t do it alone, and this is important to remember,
with the crown with which his mother has crowned him,