I texted the thought below to a friend of mine recently who’d said he sometimes found poetry impenetrable. It’s half-way to being a tweet but as I don’t tweet I thought I’d post it here. It was off the cuff but I liked it so I’m preserving it perhaps to be worked on later.
‘Poetry is the broadest class of writing, has the most forms and is the most individual and personal, along with being the most formal and artificial too. Prose fiction generally is sequential and narrative driven even when its experimental it tends to have a contextual narrative, simply put it tells a story, poetry is feelings attached to words.
So you are like most readers (myself included) more inclined to find prose, fact and fiction, easier than poetry which is often both fact and fiction at the same time!’
I composed a bit of doggerel for my friend on the day of the recent royal wedding too, as I juggled feeding my two girls at the leisure centre after swimming. He said as he’d requested them (he was at work and wanted some entertainment, and read them out to his colleagues as I sent them) they were commissions. So as they are commissioned work I thought I’d preserve them too! I think I’ll call them my ‘Anti-royal Dogs’:
First Dog:
‘Markle and His Majesty are getting wed,
That’s what the papers and tv endlessly said,
I missed it, dreaming they’d gone forever,
And of their kind I’d have to hear again, never!’
The office crowd gave a ‘mixed response’ and asked for something that rhymed with ‘parasite’
Second Dog:
‘The Royals are the greatest parasite,
Sucking our blood out morning ‘til night,
Wish I could squash them flat,
I’d be happy for the papers to report that!’
There was a short interval whilst I took both my girls to the loo, then
Third Dog:
‘If you are a parasite given wings of old
Just remember who gave you gold,
One day again instead of a wedding ring,
We’ll do that old Cromwell thing,
Take those wings and bind them tight,
Make who you call ‘insects’ feel the might
You have had all your life,
Not god given but taken with the knife
And sword of ages past,
May your blood-sucking reign not last!’
Sure they don’t quite scan but I was juggling children whilst composing and texting which was good for the parental mind!
‘Poetry is the broadest class of writing, has the most forms and is the most individual and personal, along with being the most formal and artificial too. Prose fiction generally is sequential and narrative driven even when its experimental it tends to have a contextual narrative, simply put it tells a story, poetry is feelings attached to words.
So you are like most readers (myself included) more inclined to find prose, fact and fiction, easier than poetry which is often both fact and fiction at the same time!’
I composed a bit of doggerel for my friend on the day of the recent royal wedding too, as I juggled feeding my two girls at the leisure centre after swimming. He said as he’d requested them (he was at work and wanted some entertainment, and read them out to his colleagues as I sent them) they were commissions. So as they are commissioned work I thought I’d preserve them too! I think I’ll call them my ‘Anti-royal Dogs’:
First Dog:
‘Markle and His Majesty are getting wed,
That’s what the papers and tv endlessly said,
I missed it, dreaming they’d gone forever,
And of their kind I’d have to hear again, never!’
The office crowd gave a ‘mixed response’ and asked for something that rhymed with ‘parasite’
Second Dog:
‘The Royals are the greatest parasite,
Sucking our blood out morning ‘til night,
Wish I could squash them flat,
I’d be happy for the papers to report that!’
There was a short interval whilst I took both my girls to the loo, then
Third Dog:
‘If you are a parasite given wings of old
Just remember who gave you gold,
One day again instead of a wedding ring,
We’ll do that old Cromwell thing,
Take those wings and bind them tight,
Make who you call ‘insects’ feel the might
You have had all your life,
Not god given but taken with the knife
And sword of ages past,
May your blood-sucking reign not last!’
Sure they don’t quite scan but I was juggling children whilst composing and texting which was good for the parental mind!
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