On the eve of the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, Sharon Darrow of Sutton gathered with friends. “We were distressed, and we were worried and confused,” recalled the retired author and educator, 77.
In the weeks afterward, Darrow found that whenever she tried a writing prompt, a protest in verse emerged. Inspired, she organized and led a monthlong protest poetry workshop.
One student suggested assembling an anthology, so last September Darrow put out a call to the Poetry Society of Vermont and friends across the continent for more submissions. Though the lead time was just a month, “hardly anyone said no,” she said.
Rachel Hadas, a past Guggenheim Fellow in poetry who lives part time in Danville, connected Darrow to former Kansas poet laureate Wyatt Townley, who contributed three poems, including the blistering allegory “Child at the Wheel” (“it takes everything he has // to stay on the road / with such small hands”) and the poem that gives the anthology its title.
Released by Montpelier’s Rootstock Publishing on Tuesday, during National Poetry Month, The Country in the Mirror: Poems of Protest & Witness now features 130 poems by nearly 90 contributors. Among them are current Vermont poet laureate Bianca Stone, former laureates Chard deNiord and Sydney Lea, Wicked author Gregory Maguire, Pulitzer Prize finalist Martín Espada, Coretta Scott King Award winner Nikki Grimes, and former Vermont governor Madeleine May Kunin. Darrow notes in her introduction that newcomers to verse are also represented in the anthology, giving it an unusual diversity.
The poems attack a broad spectrum of current outrages
Organized into sections named for the seasons of 2025, the poems attack a broad spectrum of current outrages: environmental devastation, xenophobia, Israel’s invasion of Gaza, attacks on free speech, the general unfitness of the White House’s occupant.
As events unfolded and reasons for rage multiplied, Darrow added poems. She penned one herself about the Capitol Hill protest by Jeffrey Epstein survivors and sourced one from Facebook about the Minneapolis killing of Renee Good.
Some of the poems in The Country in the Mirror are oblique and allusive. Others are soul-searching, calling for reaffirmation of America’s true values. A few double as reportage, such as Robin Galbraith’s “White House Peace Vigil,” a you-are-there view of the embattled continuous protest, now in its 45th year. There’s no shortage of roasts of the president, some couched in parodies of Gilbert and Sullivan or the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” References to biblical apocalypse and Dante’s Inferno abound.
Several poems reflect on the sense of impotence induced by doomscrolling. Adrienne Gruber probably speaks for many with an anguished mea culpa called “I Mostly Ignore the Horrors.” (“I have to. My family needs me,” she explains.) But The Country in the Mirror also features hopeful poems, some drawing inspiration from the beauty of a Vermont spring.
Darrow expects a strong turnout of contributors when the book launches on Saturday at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury, with public readings stretching into the evening. The anthology is “a way to say to my grandchildren that I did something during this time,” she said.
In her introduction, Darrow quotes Friedrich Nietzsche: “We have art so that we shall not die of reality.” For her, the anthology embodies the hope that creation brings. “We can’t let our despair take over,” she said. “We can’t let reality have the last word.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Verse Versus | Three poets laureate are among the Vermonters who contributed to a fiery new protest poetry anthology”
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This article appears in April 22 • 2026.
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