[Max Goodman]

On April 1, a local poetry group will hold a foolishness-themed function and, to illustrate the theme, they've invited me to give a reading. I like to include others' poems when I give a reading. Favorite foolishness poems you can suggest? Thanks.

[James Brancheau]

Hi Max-

I dunno if this is something that you'd consider for the occasion, but I like this one quite a bit.

http://buoy.antville.org/stories/355619

[Julie Steiner]

Delightful idea, Max!

I've moved this from General Talk to Musing on Mastery, where we have a number of other "Poems about..." threads.

In fact, vaguely recall posting some amphigories to an old thread here. Amphigories are a type of nonsense verse, which might or might not fit your definition of foolishness. Let me see if I can find that thread.

[Edited to say: Nope! Can't find it. But I hope to post a lovely amphigory by Rose Kelleher in a bit.]

[Roger Slater]

May I ask what you mean by "foolishness poem"? I presume you don't just mean nonsense verse or else you would have said so.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks for the move, Julie.

Thanks for the poem, James. I like it a lot, and I may very well include it. It's not at all like my own stuff, which is a very good thing.

Thanks for the question, Roger. I suppose I mostly mean "poems about foolishness," either about the concept or (more common, I imagine) about specific instances. I left it vague because I'm open to other interpretations, anything that might be appropriate for an evening celebrating foolishness. Since most of my own poems (the ones an audience is likely to enjoy) try to be funny, I'm particularly interested in poems that aren't funny, or--like the one James suggests--aren't exclusively funny. You're right that most nonsense verse wouldn't be much help. And poems the poet was foolish to write (or publish) I can supply from my own stuff.

[Julie Steiner]

Well, the narrator of the following sonnet is definitely love-struck, which is a kind of foolishness, isn't it?


Love Sonnet, by Rose Kelleher (in Bundle o' Tinder--buy it, it's fabulous!)

The soldierness of your astronomy
so gentle hungries in my panging blue,
it shivers the metal mail, unrusting you,
unresting in the owlest leaves of me.

Pitier velvets, trembler sheets of glass,
more forest floods, of piner hills bereft,
never endeared a dawn; nor fawned a theft
with sharper slenders from more willing grass.

O fain would I elfing go, and bladeful sleep
amid the winter-bell's unthroated soft,
never to sweet again your ladly cry,

if bellward be your summer's lively-keep;
and wolfen salt that cheeks your lash aloft
were petal-dreamt upon the elfer's eye.


Rose's sonnet "Flipside" might also qualify as foolishness of the love-struck variety. (For shame, Rose, saying "damn" in First Things! So inappropriate. Tsk tsk.)

Donne's "The Triple Fool" is a poem about loving someone, too--or at least it is in the line and a half before it becomes a poem about poetry.

[Susan McLean]

Love that Tony Hoagland poem! I laughed out loud a lot, even though I had read it before.

Susan

[Julie Steiner]

Shel Silverstein's "Smart" presents another kind of foolishness.

Robert Burns's "To a Louse" targets vanity. The final stanza is often quoted alone.

[RCL]

Max, I mailed you "The Contemporary Courtly Lover." Use if you like.

[Carolyn Mack]

This must be the Poets' Dinner with the theme. I have submitted entrys to this one of which is cogent to the theme. I am going and I was wondering if you would be interested in a submission? Or are you looking for
other kinds of illustrations only outside of participants?