Does anybody else here get the Daily Mail? (UK newspaper) I buy it cos SOMEBODY has to fight the Commie bar stewards in Whitehall, Fascist rag notwithstanding. Anyway, there's a daily section 'written' by the readers themselves. These donations tend to be from readers of a certain age, presumeably as part of their anti-gaga therapy at whatever care home they've been committed to. Which could explain why the daily 'poetry' offering has to be he WORST DRIVEL EVER WRITTEN.

Why?
a) It goes on. And on. And on. For ever - or so it seems.
b) It always rhymes - in the worst way possible. Da-da-da da-dee da-da, da-da da- da da-da. Da-da-da da-dee da-da, da-da ... you get the picture.
c) IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT SOMETHING SO BORING YOU WANT TO POUR BOILING LIQUID INTO YOUR EARS UNTIL YOUR BRAIN EXPLODES. Hey, I water the garden as well, but for the life of me can't make it amusing or interesting enough to fill 78 lines worth.
d) I pick up McGonegal for comparison, and am immediately immersed in Blake meets Byron meets W B yeats meets ...
e)I used to think Yeats was bad ...

I know these are amateurs, but so are the kids at my local primary school, and they've just had a book published of theirs. It's only on sale to the parents, but it reads GOOD.

It proves I DON'T buy a Fascist rag though, whatever my student friends accuse me of. Mussolini used to exterminate people for crimes like this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2008 09:31PM by Jazz_Sue.

I'll have to copy something from the Cambridge Evening News sometime. Most of that attempts to follow a rhyming scheme, but fails every fourth line. It's like proto-Vogon poetry.

No-one said facsists *all* have to be charisma personified... Only the leader does.
Or at least, the person who writes for him.

Aah, Herr Peterborough, you mean?

Fascists don't need charisma any more than communists need charisma.

Mao said political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but the best prevention for extremists of any sort is ridicule.

Now are these ersatz poets from various places members of a group which is going to overthrow the established order? Or ar they an unidentified opposition group to some other more visible group?

They may be some sort of 'League for the establishment of the split infinitive'.

I'm actually penning a little something myself, deliberately breaking all the 'rules' of the Snail Mail Poets' Society.
I'll email it to them, and then wait for the midnight knock on the door. Or the 11.30 am call from the DWP.

Shobered up a bit now. Damn Phooee all gone as well. Might as well break open the lay bees ...

Ummm, well, me da made me learn The Second Coming by heart.

And by the way, doesn't that phrase "by heart" make you stop and think for a second. Or two beats...

Today's offering, courtesy of G.Bell of Eastleigh, begins:
I've got spiders on my bathroom ceiling
Up in the corners where the paint is peeling
And I'll harbour no ill feeling
As long as they stay on the bathroom ceiling.

This is one of the better ones, containing some wry humour and clever use of rhyming narrative (deflate/exterminate etc) At least I got to the second verse without my brains dissolving.
It's right up there with Amy Winehouse (memories mar my mind/love is a fate resigned) and Sir Walter Raleigh's Holy Land of Wotsisname, innit? Both currently being studied at Cambridge as part of the third year English exam, incidentally; make of that what you will.
But then again, I mean, I know the queen chopped his head off and all that so he was never going to be Poet Laureate of the Month, but:
She is neither white nor brown/but as the heavens fair/there is none hath a form so divine/in the earth or the air...?!
It's just made me realise how bloody awful Byron was. Although I still reckon Amy has won this round, when it comes to sheer awfulness alone.

Just goes to show that the vast majority of poetry, published and unpublished, of all ages, isn't any good. The sub-McGonegals of the Daily Mail are part of a continuum which reaches up to Spenser and beyond...

I once visited a friend and (this is true in all details, unlike most of my posts, except that I'm using the word 'friend' very freely as a person like me must) a spider had taken a bankcard from a table and hoisted it up to the ceiling and incorporated it into its little web. Just what insect it thought such a lure might attract has me puzzled - perhaps it just hoped for a general rise in interest.

When I was a lad an often heard refrain was, "Don't kill that! It's a money-spider!" - a species reputed to bring good luck and wealth. I guess arachnids have moved with the times like all of us but I shudder in anticipation of hearing, "Don't kill that! It's a credit-card spider!"

Small question: What sort of spider was it?

I guess a huntsman could do it if motivated, but what other spiders do you have in the Wagga region? It might explain some of the alien abductions.

Hmm, with apologies to the Aussie posters, one of the reasons I have never wanted to visit Australia is the spiders, snakes, jellyfish and general plethora of things that want to kill you, or just don't care and do it accidentally.

I now specially don't want to visit a country containing spiders of the size and dexterity to pick up a credit card. Next thing you know they will be memorising your PIN code and emptying your account.

But back on topic, here is all I can remember of a spider poem by Mervyn Peake:

Little spider, spiding sadly
In the webly light of leaves,
Who'd deride a spide's mentadly
When the hebly's full of greaves?

(Peake went mad, but whether before or after writing this poem I know not.)

Actually, that's why I've never wanted to visit Australia too! I'm sure it's a lovely place though, and it did produce Clive James so it can't be all bad. Of course, he did leave there as did Kylie, Rolf, everyone...

Ah, let the battles commence.

E.

Well, Australia is just a colony for South Africa nowadays....

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Indeed, indeed. Wouldn't want those Aussies getting ideas above their station...

Yeah, we've got a serious invasion of South Africans at work, ah well, better than the plague of Kiwis that came before them.

Alas, the great Kiwi Fruit Invasion of '05 was a disaster of the first kind. Imagine an entire continent covered little hairy green fruits. Diabolical.

Someone here in the office is moving back to Australia soon. I think the weather has been getting her down.

E.

Down here its the poms you can't get away from. And they quickly tire of cricket jokes*

*Punchline is always "The English Cricket Team!"

Welcome back BK, and thanks for your kindest regards on the 'Get well soon' page (although moaning pom that I am, my injuries are just not in the same class as yours, which makes me feel triply bad!) Re the cricket: you can't tell jokes ABOUT a joke, which is probably why we poms stay so straight-faced when you lot try to do it.

Welcome back BK.

Re poetry:

Anyone remember Beachcomber? The TV series had Spike M as 'host' and was scripted (adapted) from J B Morton by Barry Took.

In one episode, also available on vinyl record about 40 years ago, Julian Orchard quoted about a cow. I can only remember the last line or so, but if requested I can find the LP and get all the words.

"
.......
...........

O sweet cow so lovely and mottled,
please eat up your grass before you get bottled"



And as for cricket somewhere in my dictionary of Quotations it reads:

'The English, not being a religious race, invented cricket to give themselves some idea of eternity.'



And not being racist it's not the South Africans invading that I dislike, its the attitudes of many of the white Rhodesians (Had the same problem in the UK 30 years ago - they were the most bigoted ignorant violent people I ever came across.
Not the majority of them - they were like ordinary human beings - but the hardliner Ian Smith supporters would have made the SS wince.