Poetry Forum

And another couple before invention flags

Marco Polo
walked to Manchuria solo.
When he got back he said "Cathay
is one hell of a long way away"

Elizabeth the First
shouted and stamped and cursed
when she was told that Leicester had the hots
for Mary Queen of Scots.

Praise gratefully received, Ben. Here's another

Rabindranath Tagore
could pull hot totty by the score.
He said "It's not the beauty of my song
that they they like, but my long and luminous dong"

Good fun for all the family - here's a few more to keep the pot a-boiling Rubik had a mind essentially cubic; which enabled him to invent the game that bears his name. Sigmund Freud always got fearfully annoyed whenever he heard the praises of Adler or Jung sung. Henry James used to call people very...

A riposte from HPL Now close attend my lay, ye scribbling crew That bay the moon in numbers strange and new; That madly for the spark celestial bawl In metres short or long, or none at all: Curb your rash force, in numbers or at tea, Nor overzealous for high fancies be; Reflect, ere ye the draught P...

Brian - You are quite right. Thanks for the kick in the arse. I shall persevere.

Thanks for your trouble in reading and posting. On the whole I agree with most of the crits made. I've been tinkering with this one far too long. A few bits may be salvageable, but in its present form I think I'll put it on the scrap-heap.

Round Pond, Kensington Gardens. Slowly the shuffling mortals embarrassed by children group at the pond's hard edge, prod with their sticks and fail to notice swift-scything duck flight. Proudly the elder boy keeps the kite-string taut while his sister picks leaves to throw at the wind and declines t...

Reprieve "happenstance". In the context it's the only possible word. For the rest, the verbs need strengthening: possibly even bringing the whole thing into a continuous present. As a suggestion: That face shuffles charades through hard lines learned and ironed in across the local heath; u...

But surely Spring isn't thwarted; certainly not by a few dead effing toads? Respectfully suggest a) get rid of (steely eyed) . You could be boss-eyed or pie-eyed for all the difference it makes. b) delete stanza 2. It contributes nothing. c) recast the last stanza to something like who really do not...

The idea of the similar yet contrasting varieties of betrayal (one of the oldest themes in all literature) is very interesting. The ballad of Jenny and Captain Farrel tells of a betrayal that is personal, individual and venal; while in the poem about the demise of Fitzgerald the betrayal is internec...

Haiku: Sequence for B (b. April 1929, d. March 1998) (i) March sunshine gleams on pale raw earth; catches my throat at your green farewell. (ii) All summer our cat wanders each room to find you. You do not return. (iii) October rain slaps leaves that droop in our garden. How can we share that ? (iv)...

Annie, my dear Your sentiments do you great credit, and it's only because of my age that I feel I must make some comments that, to you, my seem quite harsh. Out of respect for those men whom I saw die, nearly seventy years ago, I must suggest that you do not write any more on this topic until you ha...

I think that perhaps thou doth protest a little too much. Most of this poem is about you, not about the person you claim to regard with such fervor. In a sense, the poem needs to be turned inside-out in order to give the very powerful and genuine emotion its proper freedom to declare your full worth...

Apologies ! Didn't realise you were using the contemporary convention of a question mark instead of an exclamation mark. Silly of me not to have spotted it. I guess you must have heard many of the other "poets reading aloud" that are now available on the net. Have to confess Tennyson is my...

Whoaaa down there Sonny Jim, this ain't no competition...

My point precisely !
Glad you think its great. Me too. I was lucky enogh to hear the first broadcast. TRIFFIK!!

I'm not sure how one judges the "greatness" of any single poem of (say) the last 100 years - confining oneself, that is to poems in recognisable English. Under Milk Wood was certainly important in the history of conteporary English verse. It made a significant impact when it was first broa...

These lines are quite affecting; but I think they fall somewhat short of the full imact they could have. Clearly the person concerned means something (probably a lot) to you, or you wouldn't have written about them in the first place; yet the reader is left to puzzle over the nature of the relations...

They do say that when adders want to multiply, they gather wood from the forest and make log tables.

(Yes ! I am that old )

Thank you for this. I can recall how shocked I and my friends were when we heard the news of the destruction of those great carvings, and the disgust we felt for the intolerance of the people who would do such a thing ( though few nations have not been guilty of this kind of iconoclasm over the year...

Ease Batteries removed, ungrooved from iron claws that bind time, render the clock powerless. Since you begin your second stanza in the imperative mode, you might strengthen the poem by starting the whole poem that way eg Render the clock powerless. Remove the batteries from those iron claws that b...

Masochist: Hit me ! Kick me ! Stick pins in me ! Stamp on me !
Sadist :No !

This isn't a poem. It's a description of mildly self-harming behaviour, and almost adolescent self pity. Its merits are its clarity and pithiness.
Why does the writer think anyone else would be interested ?

This Fantasic Garden Who cares to walk in this fantasic garden among the steel anemones, may talk (if he has learned their private language) with wire-tongued mocking birds; or by alternate paths descend into a pleasaunce of wax roses centred about a fishpond filled with ink where nymphs, cast in tr...

Maybe the world is now the same abomination of desolation as it was in 1866,
when the news from Banter Creek seems to have been much the same as the news today -
money, love and death.
For goings-on at Banter Creek see:-
posting.php?mode=reply&f=20&t=12402

The first line is very good: the start of a good poem. What follows seems to be what you think the rest of the poem should be about; that's to say the lines are really "working notes" for a poem. They probably mean a lot to you ( a sense of their importance glimmers through here and there)...

I feel privileged to have seen this poem, for I found it intensely moving, and hope, at some time in the future to see it published in a recognised collection. An editor might query phrases like ".. dressed in a white, " (L5) and might suggest that "council" should be "couns...