Oct 2017
What makes a good poem?
Is it the rhythm? The structure? The carefully placed similes like dog treats and the restricted use of rhetorical questions?
Oh.
If that's the case,
I think I failed the test.
Oh please! Don't leave! Let me try this again!
(A cough to clear the throat)
Ha-HEM.
When one writes iambic pentameter
Doth that make his good prose the worthier then?
...No?
If I write a witty couplet in a rhyme
Does that make this utter **** more worth your time?
Have I got the tempo right?
I need an exclamatory tone!
Rhyming feels better somehow
But it doesn't make trombone.
My jittery jilted stream-of-consciousness different-line-length punctuation-less word-***** onto a page-
Pause for breath-
Can never match the likes of Donne or Keats;
But I've bled my soul and fire onto this page
And surely, that is worth more than conceits?
Is it the rhythm? The structure? The carefully placed similes like dog treats and the restricted use of rhetorical questions?
Oh.
If that's the case,
I think I failed the test.
Oh please! Don't leave! Let me try this again!
(A cough to clear the throat)
Ha-HEM.
When one writes iambic pentameter
Doth that make his good prose the worthier then?
...No?
If I write a witty couplet in a rhyme
Does that make this utter **** more worth your time?
Have I got the tempo right?
I need an exclamatory tone!
Rhyming feels better somehow
But it doesn't make trombone.
My jittery jilted stream-of-consciousness different-line-length punctuation-less word-***** onto a page-
Pause for breath-
Can never match the likes of Donne or Keats;
But I've bled my soul and fire onto this page
And surely, that is worth more than conceits?
This is my attempt at humour. Apologies. The title is a play on 'A Good Friday, 1613, riding Westward', a poem by John Donne, who I was studying at the time. This was prompted by reading all the great poets and realising that, technically, I will never be as 'good' as them. But I like to think that art isn't quantifiable, and that so long as you write with truth and emotion, you'll create something beautiful.
