Culture

James Franco Wrote a Pretty Terrible Inauguration Day Poem

After Yahoo! News commissioned him and other "poets" to write poems, actor/writer/superlative-lover James Franco wrote about how he had no idea what to write about the president, but that he met him once. As expected, nobody likes it all that much.

By Esther Zuckerman
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After Yahoo! News commissioned him and other "poets" to write poems on the occasion of Inauguration Day, actor/writer/superlative-lover James Franco wrote a little something about how he had no idea what to write about the president, but that he met him once. As expected, nobody likes it all that much. President Obama, if you were wondering, knew Franco from Spider-Man. Here's a sample:

I met Obama once, in D.C., the Correspondents’ Dinner.
I was the guest of Vanity Fair, guided through D.C. by the wife
Of Christopher Hitchens, when he was alive. We went to Hitch’s place,
He had books from floor to ceiling, and said he had read

To Borges, when he was blind, Old Icelandic Eddas—
Then we waited in a private room with the likes of Tom Cruise,
And Katie Holmes, and Claire Danes. When Obama entered
The crowd converged. Finally, I got to shake his hand,

He knew me from Spider-Man. I asked him for advice,
I was scheduled to give the commencement speech at UCLA
And there were some undergraduate knockers against me;
He had been denied the usual honorary degree by Arizona State

You can also watch Franco read the poem himself in what is described as a "shadowy amateur vid" (see below). The poem, as is to be expected, has its detractors:

Other poets included in Yahoo!'s project include Pulitzer Prize winner James Tate and Pulitzer Prize winner and New Yorker editor Paul Muldoon. The official inaugural poet is Richard Blanco.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.