A collection of recession poetry

Flickr photo from Respres'

CLAUDIA-TERESA POU - MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

There is nothing like a recession to get the creative juices flowing, so I decided to ask a few current and former writers from the Medill News Service to address the current economic downturn through poetry, haikus and sonnets.  The turnout was surprising and the submissions quickly began flooding my inbox.

I have to be completely honest and tell you that the idea wasn’t all mine.  It’s an adaptation from something I saw in The New York Times. Earlier this week, NYT asked readers to submit their own artistic representations of the recession.  I thought — what’s better than asking a group of writers to submit their own original verses?

Take a look.  This is a collection from a group of budding journalists, sharing their own artistic representation of the recession in poetry, haikus and sonnets.  If this gets your creative juices going, feel free to post your original verse by clicking on the “comment” link below.

“The Recession Sing-a-long”

Sitting on the corner
Watching all the jobs go “bye”
Seeing all the cardboard boxes
And empty stores
Makes me want to cry
But at the end of the day
Even if you sometimes can’t pay
Think of the sales…
And everything else pales!
-Karen Leigh

It’s the Pits

It’s really a kind of an oddity,
The troubles within our economy,
But don’t get convinced in these times of high risk
That the answer resides in commodities.

There once was a man in the corn pit
Much money of late did he forfeit.
Took many positions but never did
listen and it stung him at last like a hornet.

There once was a guy trading soybeans,
Sold them all while the prices were soaring.
But now they are down, the smile is a frown
And he calls the recession annoying.

I once knew a dunce trading treasuries,
Could not stand when he went into reveries.
Playing the field celebrating the yield
Oh guess what now he practices peasantry.

Remember our pal in the S&P?
He shorted the thing so successfully.
But ouch he got hit after all markets slipped
Now it pains him to hear the word equity.

I once had a wife who was riveted,
With my presence and words I deliver-ed
Now she gives me some slaps for financial
relapse saying “how could you lose our derivatives!”
-J.H. Freeman

There once was a street called Wall,
That made the economy fall,
I lost my money,
But the outlook is sunny,
Go back to your put and call.
-Thomas Elliott

nowadays it’s clear
money doesn’t grow on trees
it blows up instead
-Inyoung Hwang

To An Economy Dying Young

The time you grew at a quick pace
We cheered throughout the marketplace;
Investors stood cheering by,
And banks held you shoulder-high.

Today, the course all markets run,
Has runied all your fun,
And set the banks afury,
While Obama attempts recovery.

We thought it would never die,
So for mortgages they plied,
The young, the jobless and the rest,
They can’t pay as payments vest.

Houses, empty where they lay
Far removed is the market’s heyday,
The Dow below seven thou,
While everyone is left to ask how.

And while markets collapse anew,
There come a lucky few,
For whom money will return again,
It’s just a matter of when.
- John Templon

Economy bad
Jobs nonexistent today
Glad to be in school
-Stefan Maisnier

Give me a job
Living here ain’t free
Got to love that hiring freeze
Dude, where’s my money?
-Sara Sargent

downy dow
equity fly
great heights
crash

comfort cowed
before avarice
american? crash
- dennis foster mickle

The economy sucks,
and indices are in the pits,

so I shorted every market,
and now I’m freakin’ rich.
-Matt Marquez

If I were a rich man,
I wouldn’t be American.
-Jordan Melnick

Real
Estate
Craze
Ends.
Stocks
Slip.
Investments
Offer
Nothing.
-Kate Shellnutt

Tags: contributions, music, poetry, recession