Then and Now
Where statesmen once sought wisdom from Athena,
And from her owl, to weigh, sway, judge, and pardon,
Many in our political arena
Pay homage to Priapus and his hard-on.
Timothy Steele is the author of several collections of poems, most recently Toward the Winter Solstice (2006). He has also published two books of scholarship and literary criticism, Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter (1990) and All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification (1999); and he has edited The Poems of J.V. Cunningham (1997).