Paisley Rekdal

Sometimes, NPR doesn't waste taxpayer making liberal propaganda, but wastes money trying to be on the cusp of contemporary culture. NPR's latest invention for its evening newscast All Things Considered is the "news poet," someone who follows the NPR crew around in their DC studios to compose a poem on the spot. There's one small problem: the few experiments this year haven't been about the "news" or current events at all.

On Tuesday night, anchor Robert Siegel announced that poet Paisley Rekdal, the author of poetry collections titled A Crash of Rhinos and Six Girls Without Pants, was inspired by story ideas that didn't make it on the newscast: "seabirds ingesting plastic, Russian floods, rooftop missiles to protect the Olympic games" -- and an NPR staffer moving to Texas. The precious poem that resulted -- about how "if life was an app, we'd call it Sisyphus" -- was just a modern mess: