40 Denier Fog

The problem with offering #poetry criticism is that you want to nick bits.

Perhaps pinch is too strong a word, borrow for reasons of cross-reference might be a better term. Though not one  a judge might rule in your favour.

It is not the words themselves that you are after. It is the ideas and images connected to them.

Take 'plums'.

I like plums, they are one of the few remaining summer treats not subject to Scramble for Africa farming; sweet flesh, sour skin, and the tongue play of the heart stone. Whenever, they appear in a poem they always create an impression of jealousy within me, the wish to steal. I'll quite happily carry rhymes, styles, rhythms, off to my magpie nest, I have no issue with carrying entire poems for homage or parody, but for whatever reason I never touch another poets plums.... and yes that it a little joke, and you may laugh.

Which brings me onto something slightly different.

Comedy, what is it, and when does something become a comedy.

I ask because some of the feedback I have gotten with regard to the poem Mary Berry (the link won't work on goodreads) has seen it as purely a comic piece. Which is fine. But I began to ponder the issue. Is it the satire of female sexuality? Is it the rhythm? Is it the use of rhyme? Maybe. If one looks at Shakespeare, often the 'comic' sections use rhythm and rhyme to signpost the light heartedness. A good example is the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Nights Dream - the raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the prison gates and phibus car shall shine from far and make and mar the foolish fates etc.

A common complaint among the art is a bowl of fruit crowd is that poetry should have rhythm and rhyme. Does that make all poetry comic?

And what of the poetry that is deadly serious? You know the sort - black, death, grim black, coal black, grindel, grundle, wo! - or the one sided social comment that mentally castrates opposition and denies humanity? These are often, provided you can force yourself to trudge through them, hilarious.

Perhaps Alan Alder was right, in which ever Woody Alan film it was - when he said, 'if it breaks it's funny'.

I know I have a chuckle whenever I see a poem about lost love - heartbreak - it's never funny when you explain the joke etc....

Which is a long winded way of saying I didn't write much yesterday, though I was provoked by some marvellous verse I was tempted to purloin. And, I am not in the mood to highlight anything in The Blue Book.




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