Calvin Trillin Returns to Verse to Chronicle the Election

Richard Drew/Associated Press Calvin Trillin

Random House said Friday that Calvin Trillin had completed the manuscript for his newest book - a collection of satirical poems about the just-finished election - called “Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse.”

The book, which will be published on Nov. 20, two weeks after the election, is described by Random House as one long, narrative poem “interrupted regularly by other poems and occasionally by what the author calls a pause for prose.”

Mr. Trillin's poetry about the last election, “Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme” was a best seller, as was “Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme.”(2004)

Targets of Mr. Trillin's rhyming observations this time are the Tea Party (“These folks were quick to vocally condemn/All handouts but the ones that went to them”), the field of Republican hopefuls (“Though first-tier candidates were mostly out,/ Republicans were asking, “What about/The second tier or what about the third?/ Has nothing from those other tiers been heard?”) and Michele Bachmann (“Michele, our belle/ Thinks that gays will all be sent to hell”).