Sunday Poem: A Conversation With Henry Wallace

I Wrote This in 2017, During Trump’s First Term

Henry A. Wallace remains an outlier among American vice presidents, in no small part because of an iconoclastic speech made in 1942 countering a growing push for an American century. Rather than empire, he said in “The Century of the Common Man,” he called for a focus on humanity and improving the lives of free people.

During Donald Trump’s first term, the principles Wallace identified were under fire — as they are still. I wrote this poem in response.

A Conversation with Henry Wallace