The A1 Verse: Joe Manchin’s gift of gob

By Thomas Gaulkin | March 28, 2022

(Image credits: DonkeyHotey, Peabody Energy, David Maiolo, Ed Hawkins)

Every so often, a story published on the front page of the New York Times is so well written, meaningful, and appropriate to the Bulletin’s concerns that small snippets of it, properly chosen and arranged, produce something more than journalism, something that approaches … poetry. That blessed coincidence occurred March 28, 2022.

We suspect it’ll occur again.


How Manchin Aided Coal Industry, and Earned Himself Millions

(from the original by Christopher Flavelle, Julie Tate and Erin Schaff)

On a hilltop looms a smokestack
   a dying Appalachian.
Power rose through the single figure
   shaping the nation,
interwoven with his gob at key moments,
   to benefit the urge.


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