It should not come as any surprise that a poem about the human tendency to match order with disorder should appear in 1999. By that time, the relatively stable and prosperous 1990s were already beginning to unravel. The decade began with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, ending the Cold War that for three generations of Americans had defined the issue of national defense. The biggest news story of 1991 was that U.S. President William Clinton was the first president in over a hundred years to be impeached by Congress. Clinton had been president throughout the 1990s, and investigations into his business and personal affairs had been ongoing since soon after his administration took office. In 1998 the House of Representatives voted to try Clinton for perjury after he lied to a grand jury about an affair he was having. Because of the intensive scrutiny, and the...