And passionate regrets.

Rachel Loden at Poetry Foundation

Tad Richards on Rachel Loden

Nixon was not a popular figure to the American left, nor to much of the literary community, but Loden never uses him simply as the butt of jokes or diatribes. She is his amanuensis, he her muse, her id, even her lover. In one poem, "Bride of Tricky D.,"she marries him, letting neither his being dead nor already married stand in the way of their wedded bliss ("I find/his fierce beard lovely and the shadows/long. Asleep with Pat and Checkers/by his side ..."