11/8/2024: Trump Sonnets--9 Full-Length Volumes!
Well, this website has long been a placeholder, haven't touched it in a few years after the first push of eight books which I wrote from November, 2016 to January 2021. But this morning, Friday, November 8, 2024, I changed the 8 Full-Length Volumes on the header here, to 9 Full-Length Volumes to signify that in December 2023 I finished a Volume 9, which I had subtitled, The Fall of the House of Trump. Today, I'm revising that to The House of Trump. It appears he and his family haven't fallen yet--though I remain confident they will. I'm optimistic despite the darkness.
The plan has been to finish this project with a Trump Sonnets, Volume 10, to be subtitled The Ghost Edition. The idea with that concluding volume was to put the former president--and now, unbelievably, future president--in a larger context.
In the first eight collections I imagined voices of many in his personal and political orbit (that was Volume 4), plus I imagined voices from citizens around the world (that was Volume 3) and citizens from around the United States (that was Volume 8). But the majority of the poems in the first eight editions were in the voice of Donald Trump himself, though almost half of Volumes 1 & 2 were commentary poems about Trump. The project found its footing as I continued with the writing.
For the ninth I wrote extended 13-sonnet sequences in the imagined voices of Donald Trump, Melania, Donald Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Eric, Lara, Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Tiffany, and then Donald again. I've figured a way to post that work on this site in its entirety. You can find it right here, https://trumpsonnets.com/trump-sonnets-volume-9.
There was no sense getting Volume 9 published as a stand-alone. What I've been planning has been to finish this project by writing Volume 10, which was going to be in the voices of, literally, ghosts, so as to not only imagine the voices of Donald Trump's deceased parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings, and so on, but to imagine the response to Trump from historic figures.
After finishing Trump Sonnets, Volume 10, The Ghost Edition, I'd go back to the beginning, revise, assemble, and find a publisher for the whole thing of approximately 800 poems, all sonnets. The past years I've applied for major fellowships to find the time, space, and, most critically, financial support to allow me to write this final section.
While some folks have already wondered whether I'd be getting back to writing more Trump Sonnets, the answer to that is I'll continue what I've been doing. While I'm following current events--and I'll wait and see how it's going to go since it could be really, really bad, or really bad, or it could go even worse than I imagine--I just don't know what's next. I didn't expect the results of the 2024 election.
(Today, this morning, February 27, 2025, I thought I'd mention what I'd been thinking about for Volume 10. It will still be The Ghost Edition, and there will still be a genealogical component. But for the historical, and contextual, I'll write sonnets in the voices of all the deceased U.S. presidents. What would they have to say? At some point--and I'll continue to apply for support to help with time, space, finances--I'll be at a place where I can do the research and find out what they'll all say, from George Washington to Ulysses Grant to Dwight Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter. That seems about right, letting all those presidents weigh in.)
What I do know is that to work on extended projects, I really need to sit down day-in and day-out. That's why Volume 9 took so much time (and why I could knock off so much of it in a few weeks last December at a month-long residency in Fairhope, Alabama when I had full days and weeks to get work done without having to drive to where I had to go next).
So, again, here's a link to the page where I've set Volume 9, The House of Trump.
I finished this almost a year ago now. I haven't had a single response to it because it hasn't yet been out in the world. Maybe someone here will read it (and let me know what they think). What a year it's been (which has also included the demise of SPD, Small Press Distribution, the distributor which which allowed my books published by Ridgeway Press to be in the world, so, now, really, the only way the earlier editions can be found is directly through me and what you might scavenge online--and, no, I don't recommend patronizing Amazon). And what a time we'll be facing ahead. Let's all do what we can!
---Ken Waldman, Friday, November 8, 2024, from a motel room, Coffeyville KS
Latest Trump Sonnets news: Volumes 5, 6, 7 are all out in the world
as of January 2021, and available at SPD (they've already sold their
first shipment, so the publisher and I are shipping more). Volume 8
is now written, has a September 1, 2021 publication date, and we
expect preview copies by early April.
Happy news about this project: The Puffin Foundation, LTD has
awarded a grant to writer/musician/performer Ken Waldman for
his theater piece, Trump Sonnets or: How I've Taken on Donald
Trump (and Won). The announcement came in February, 2020.
You want satire? Yes, we have satire!
You want tough-minded poems? Yes, we have tough-minded poems!
You want answers? (Is there ever an answer?) One answer, maybe, is
to read all eight Trump Sonnets books, have yourself some fun, and be
inspired to stay vigilant and do what you can in these perilous times
(and while Trump may be out of office, the times are still perilous).
Trump Sonnets, Volume 1 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2017)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 2 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2018)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 3 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2019)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 4 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2020)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 5 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2021)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 6 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2021)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 7 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2021)
Trump Sonnets, Volume 8 (Ridgeway Press, Roseville MI, 2021)
On the right, a video produced by Troy Bennett of the Bangor Daily
News in June 2019 prior to Ken Waldman's appearances at PortFringe,
a festival in Portland, Maine. There's a story about it here.
Click the Ridgeway Press website to read about Ridgeway Press, the
Michigan publisher of these Trump-inspired books, and others.
Early 2019, Ken Waldman appeared in New York City, Cambridge MA,
New Orleans, San Francisco, and Portland ME for book release shows,
including the latest production of the full-length theater piece.
At PortFringe in Portland, Maine, Waldman performed five solo shows.
There, reviewer Douglas Milliken wrote, "It’s a Fringe mainstay, the
unlikely confluence of disparate things finding logical (or at least intuitive)
common ground. For example: on the surface, there seems very little to
suggest that traditional Appalachian fiddle music would lend itself to left-
leaning, spoken-word, Beat-inflected poetry (think less Gary Snyder and
more Jack Kerouac). Yet reduced to their abstractions, what we’re dealing
with are two mythologizing genres, one recalling fondly an idealized
American past and the other a stylized American present. Combine that with
an unselfconscious meander of improvised storytelling, and how is this not
the perfect vehicle for discussing the human experience of our 45th president?"
Trump Sonnets, Volumes 1, 2, and 3