Al Gore, Poet Laureate ...of Climate Change?

As storm clouds gather and foment in the Climategate crisis (aka "The CRUtape Letters"), there is still one ray of sunshine, and it comes from the pen of Al Gore.

Mark Hertsgaard, author of the forthcoming Living Through the Storm: Our Future Under Global Warming, writes on VF's Power & Politics Blog that

with the publication of his new book, Our Choice, Gore has unveiled a fresh and most unexpected talent: the book’s opening chapter concludes with a poem he wrote—21 lines of verse that are equal parts beautiful, evocative, and disturbing.

Remember those three fawning adjectives. Now read a portion of the poem that makes Hertsgaard eager to crown Gore the "Poet Laureate of Climate Change":

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea

Soareagle in the comments section reacts, "Algore, the poetic, literary genius. What a twit." BernardL says, "oh barf!" Indeed, there are better nature poets out there. One gets the sense that Hertsgaard cares simply for what the poem is all too patently about.

What also confounds me is the illustration paired with Hertsgaard's post: Al Gore in a photoshopped black beret. Why? Why are berets here associated with poetry? Is this an instance of the hat being used as a sort of crown-in-disguise, or a wreath of Apollonian laurels? Is Hertsgaard hinting that Gore is an artist, too?

Who knows. But outside my window yesterday's snow is melting, and it still seems appropriate to think of the wavering climate. But I prefer to say goodnight to Gore's verses, pick up a book of Horace's Odes, and read 4.7, Diffugere nives ("the snows have fled"). I would invite you to share a pot of tea with me as I read, but the Internet is not advanced enough to allow that. I can provide the Latin, however, which is here, and William Maxwell reading A.E. Housman's still unmatched translation here. As Housman writes, Feast then, thy heart!