Presidential poetry Baron Wormser introduces a brand-new Carthage BY SAM PFEIFLE

There is a Carthage, Maine. It’s up near Mexico and Mount Blue and is mostly unremarkable. Like Moscow and Paris and Peru, it speaks to a desire on some early Mainer’s part to relate some worldly qualities onto a wooded hinterland. Literally meaning "new city," it’s fun to think that Carthage, Maine, was ever envisioned to be the new city the Phoenicians imagined their ancient city to be.

The original Carthage was an ocean-front center of trade. Maine’s will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Yet another lesson that names and words can convey only so much meaning.

In his new collection of poetry, Maine’s Poet Laureate Baron Wormser chooses Carthage as a name for an imagined president of the United States, maybe because of the connotations of war that Carthage cannot escape. Just how much this Carthage is and isn’t our own current President Bush is hard to say, but people have certainly had plenty of fun with the connotations spelled out by that name, Bush.

Stay away from my bush, cry feminists. I’m bushed by Bush, others joke. Never elect a son of a Bush, read bumper stickers. And there’s, of course, the question of whether being elected and called president makes one presidential.

Wormser is clearly having fun with all of this wordplay, while still toiling with serious subjects. This is definitely a political piece, Carthage, and its powerful commentary is heartening coming from our Poet Laureate (a title that confers stature whether Wormser wants it to or not). This is exactly the kind of book we should hope for from our poet-in-chief: accessible, fun, serious, and honest. It is incredibly thoughtful, never simplistic, and, most importantly, makes for a great read.

With a sentiment a bit like Herschel Sternlieb’s fables, each poem has "Carthage" in its title, and each offers us a little peek into the president’s thought process. He is a simple man, who likes to play poker and wishes he had more (any) sex with his wife. He is a vindictive man, who’d like to shoot the crows outside his window. He is a funny man, who wishes one of his advisors would just come out and say: "Look, Carthage, you don’t know shit about this/ And if you don’t care to know anything/ Just sign on the line and save us the time."

That poem, "Carthage’s Advisors," also shows how funny Baron Wormser can be. There are a number of laugh-out-loud lines in this collection, something the general public might not predict. A Laureate of the people, Wormser knows how to swear, taps into our deepest snickering thoughts about big Bush, and paints a portrait we desperately want to recognize.

Carthage considers his advisors: "The women, he’s noticed, tend to be a little flat chested/ Probably from being so brainy." He remembers the girl who distracted him from Western Civ: "Dawn-Something-or-Other/ When they fucked, she flung her arms all over the place./ A couple of times she bopped him on the chin./ He kind of liked it."

Wormser balances this whimsy, though, with hard hitting final lines that often smash you like an O.Henry. "Carthage’s Diary," for instance, is a funny little take on imagining what might go in a president’s diary. "He could write about what he had for breakfast," but he decides that seems trivial. "He’s given orders to invade a few countries./ That’s not something everyone has done," but he decides the thrill of that is fleeting.

In the end, "Carthage sighs. He can erase everything." In subtle lines like these, Wormser manages to magnify the US president’s great power without ever bashing you over the head with it, at the same time positing that Carthage is both aware of it and unable to control it.

In "Carthage and the Evil," we see the president at his most contemplative. He delineates the Evil and the Bad, barely acknowledging the Good, because "The Good have no ambassadors./ They are tasteless as water./ They drudge in the apolitic mills of love." In the layout of this poem, too, Wormser points at the president’s conflicting thoughts. Many of the poems are left-justified. This and others has lines that float about the page — maybe leaning to the right? Implicitly leaning toward the Bad, as Carthage does in this poem?

It’s hard to say. Wormser does, finally, present us with a very human president in Carthage. He’s no monster. In "Carthage and the Television," we’re told that Carthage likes seeing himself on television, and the expectation might be that it’s because he’s an egomaniac. But floating out there on the left side of the page is the simple line, "He exists." It’s a reminder that even the most powerful of men must suffer existential dilemmas because "When you live in front of others/ You misplace yourself."

In Carthage, Wormser never misplaces himself. He is always just on the boundaries of his poems, leaving us with a main character we come to know as deep, conflicted, and someone who probably shouldn’t be running our country, all things being equal. But those are conclusions we’re allowed to reach for ourselves, and conclusions that require more than a little self-inquiry along the way.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com

Baron Wormser reads at Longfellow Books, in Portland, on Thursday, May 19. Call (207) 772-4045.