A TOWERING FIGURE IN POETRY
April is NATIONAL POETRY MONTH (as decreed by the Academy of American Poets in 1996). Can there be any doubt that a poet of my stature* would be expected to contribute a poem to the celebration?
*about 5′ 7″
As it happens, I had a poem in my April 20 post, but that doesn’t count….unless I say it does, which I don’t, because I’ve composed a new poem for the occasion (or any occasion, for that matter). The point is that this occasion happens to be at hand and is sufficiently worthy of a work of such distingué distinktion:
ONCE A POET
Once I wrote poems;
Writing poems was fun.
Once I wrote poems;
Now I write none.
Once I wrote poems;
Poems were my life.
Once I wrote poems;
Then I met my wife.
I’m just joking, of course;
I still write, as you see —
For my wife loves my poems,
And I still loves she*.
*That end word was going to be me, but that might be the end of me, so I reconsidered.
Thank you very much, ladies and sentimentalmen. I’m glad you appreciate the heartfelt passion and savoir fairy that went into said poem. Your defecating applause on this historic day warms my cockles to the core. This calls for a curtain call. But I don’t have another new poem handy, so how about two oldies that survived previous publication:
RHYME GONE TO HELL
I don’t comprehend
why poems that rhyme
must, most of the time,
just rhyme at line’s end.
Who so decreed it to, as though it needed
to? And would it spell
nonsense if most rhymes
commence where lines start?
Dare we call it art?
Where I’m at, at times,
is: does it matter where rhyme is, if indeed
it’s where mine is? Hell!!!
TRYING TIMES
Forgive me, please, my verse you’ve read —
Much better works are in my head….
– But they’ll remain there
– Until the brain there
Learns how to extract gold from lead.
But enough about me. Let us close on a serious quote from ex-Chancellor of the aforementioned Academy of American Poets, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet/novelist, Robert Penn Warren, who was fittingly born (April, 1905) in what would become National Poetry Month:
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
scifihammy 1:48 am on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
Love your poems! 🙂
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mistermuse 2:25 am on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
Me too! And I also admire my humility! 🙂
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Cynthia Jobin 8:07 am on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
I had not thought of begin-rhyme as an alternative to end-rhyme…an ingenious idea! And I see your poetry as taking a place in the great canon of verse somewhere beside/between Edward Lear and Ogden Nash…but I could be mythtaken…
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mistermuse 3:13 pm on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
Cynthia, if Robert Penn Warren was right, we’re both mythtaken (a designation I’m honored to have in common with you). I would suggest reflecting our status by changing our names to myth-termuse and Mythnia Jobin, but our readers might think we both lisp.
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arekhill1 9:23 am on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
I wish you would remind me earlier of these national month celebrations, Sr. Muse. It’s the 25th and I haven’t rhymed a damn thing.
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mistermuse 3:35 pm on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
As Yogi Berra once said,
It ain’t over till it’s….dead.
Others say, not until the fat lady doth sing —
So you still have 5 days to rhyme a damn thing.
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Don Frankel 9:49 am on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
I think you’ve got the gold from lead down pat Muse.
I also think rhyme comes from the need to memorize. It’s a memory trick. Don’t forget people were writing poetry long before anyone figured out how to write it all down.
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mistermuse 3:39 pm on April 25, 2016 Permalink |
Good point, Don. At my age, I need all the memory tricks I can get.
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BroadBlogs 3:48 pm on April 26, 2016 Permalink |
Fun poems!
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mistermuse 5:50 pm on April 26, 2016 Permalink |
I’m just a fungi — I mean, fun guy! In any case, I’m glad you enjoyed the poems.
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RMW 10:47 am on April 27, 2016 Permalink |
Did not realize this was National Poetry Month… So when is National Prose Month?
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mistermuse 1:24 pm on April 27, 2016 Permalink |
Thanks for that thorny question.
There doesn’t seem to be a National Prose Month, but there is a National Rose Month (June). Those who prefer prose to rose could “p” on a rose and make it prose, and perhaps it will catch on and become National Prose Month. After all, a rose by any other name would….whatever.
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D. Wallace Peach 9:11 pm on April 29, 2016 Permalink |
I hope you can hear the “deafening” applause from over here! Loved them. LOL
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mistermuse 4:02 pm on May 4, 2016 Permalink |
Thanks. Sorry for the late response to your comment, but your applause was so deafening, I didn’t hear it until now. 🙂
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