Tag: Light verse

Posted on

B among the Consonants

O bulbous periwinkle,
sunk in sodden goldenrod sand,
your valve sets me a-tingle.
Let me hold you in my hand.

***
First in a series of twenty-one. In homage to Arthur Rimbaud and his Voyelles, but also to Binney & Smith Company, the creators of Crayola wax crayons. 

I think of them as love poems to the consonants, but with the proviso that each refer to at least one crayola colour.

The smell “of Crayola crayons is one of the most recognizable scents for [U.S.] adults, ranking at number 18, trailing coffee and peanut butter that were number one and two respectively, but beating out cheese and bleach, which placed at 19 and 20.”

tumblr_nbo5ejD9Yz1rbqmj1o1_500

Posted on

#cats

Why does purr rhyme with fur?
— How human of you to ask!
Simply because we cats prefer
petting us to be your main task.

***
Morgenstern’s Gallowsong led me to Edward Lear and then even, God forbid, to T.S. Eliot. Suddenly popped out of my mind this feline trifle.

The contents of the 1938 edition of The Oxford Book of Light Verse which I ended up pulling off my shelves in that quest were selected by W.H. Auden, still in his crypto-Marxist phase, so he opined:

“When the things in which the poet is interested, the things which he sees about him, are much the same of those of his audience, and that audience is a fairly general one, he will not be conscious of himself as an unusual person, and his language will be straightforward and close to ordinary speech. When, on the other hand, his interests and perceptions are not readily acceptable to society, or his audience is a highly specialized one, perhaps of his fellow poets, he will be acutely aware of himself as the poet, and his method of expression may depart very widely from the normal social language. In the first case his poetry will be light”.

A rather humorless description of what cannot float without humor.