No apology is ever enough for the digital mob

Promoting physical fitness, the left has developed a bracing set of competitive callisthenics. Participants vie over who can complete a marathon crawl on the belly like a reptile, who can flop onto the floor in a pose of the greatest prostration, and who can bend over the farthest, pants down, while begging to have large pieces of furniture shoved up the backside. Athletic displays of public remorse also constitute an increasingly popular spectator sport.

The young American poet Anders Carlson–Wee was excited at first about getting ‘How-To’ published in a July issue of the Nation, a storied New Statesman-style weekly. The poetry I read in a year would fit on a cereal box — it’s not my form — but I still think, for a short 14-liner, ‘How-To’ is nicely done. You don’t need a doctorate in postmodernism to discern that the poem is sympathetic to the homeless. Its point is also apparent: to get passers-by to tithe, a homeless person has to flatter the targets’ moral vanity.