[John Whitworth]

I've put this here because I wondered if it fitted in with Roy Chilverton's paeonics, one strong stress and three weak ones. I've written things in this metre before. It's quite easy once you get started. There's a lot of stuff over here about Ted and Sylvia AGAIN and I see from the internet that Sylvia's mother reckoned she was a cheerful sort of girl until she met the doomy limey. Perhaps she had it in her to turn into a romantic novelist and be happy.

Sylvia’s Verse

She never should have married him, she never should have wed.
She should’ve stayed a single girl and kept her single bed.
For pity’s sake, her big mistake was saying yes to Ted.

He was hairy, he was handsome, he had dreamy bedroom eyes.
'Let me feel your pain and take the strain. I deeply sympathise.'
He could knock them down like ninepins, it was really no surprise.

A handsome man with bedroom eyes, a poet and a scholar.
A diamond geezer, made to please, a hundred cents a dollar,
An English gent and Heaven sent to rescue girls from squalor.

And yet, do not forget, too many poets in a house is
Just an overplus of verse that leads to quarrels and to grouses.
Yes, the bard life is a hard life, that’s unless you wear the trousers.

Oh, she should’ve been a saga not a single, sad novella,
For she wasn’t patient Grizel and she wasn’t Cinderella
And she should have done a runner with another sort of feller,

Say a fancy sort of feller with a fashion in frivolity,
A jokey sort of bloke who spun a line in jazz and jollity,
A Yankee Doodle dandy with a Technicolor quality.

But eerie, dark and dreary, Ted was lacking in romance,
Just a sombre sort of hombre who had never learned to dance.
Yup! she should’ve upped and buggered off the time she had the chance.




[This message has been edited by John Whitworth (edited October 18, 2008).]

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

John,

As a Plath fan, I quite enjoyed this. And I agree that two poets in a house is probably not balanced. Therefore, I am thankful that my husband cares nothing for poetry nor is he dreamy-headed or a chaser of skirts. At times, I've been frustrated that we were not more alike, but I know it is probably for the best in the long run.

Anne

[Charles Doran]

John,
I too like a whole lot of Plath's stuff---even if I don't wholly get it. This is a jocular treatment of a tragic life, but it chimes with,it works, because we know, or think we know, from biographers and dirt-diggers of the period, that the devil incarnate Ted was responsible for all. It shouldn't be forgotten however that Sylvia had a whole lot of other stuff going on in her head, pre-Ted: not least the relationship she had with her S.S.General "Daddy"; nor should it be forgotten that she had made,if memory serves, at least two very serious attempts on her own life before she ever met him. I don't remember Leonard Woolfe getting the blame for Ginny.
Anyway John, nice, however irreverant, poem.
Charles.

[Janet Kenny]

Love it! And I can put a case for both of them when I'm in another mood. Rhymes, meter, wit--nothing lacking.
Janet

[Stuart Farley]

For a piece such as this where the rhymes are paramount, I feel that the "house is" rhyme in Stanza 4 is a little weak. All the other rhymes are flawless and come so easily that this seems a bit of a let down.

Also - and I know this won't apply to most people - I just can't get romance, dance, and chance to rhyme! With my southern English drawl I seem to forcibly insert absent r's into chance and dance, but for some reason not romance!!

Otherwise, this is very good.

Stuart

[John Whitworth]

Oh Stuart, house is/trousers is my favourite rhyme in the whole poem! Surely everybody says trouziz. And even if they don't, it's one of those inspired bad rhymes like some of Byron's. Dance/chance/romance works most places but not in South East England. But then Sylvia was American and Ted was - oh I don't know, something northern.

[Charles Doran]

Hey, if Byron got away with, why not us humble lot? I remember hearing at University that Byron, in 'Don Juan' alone, used a ridiculously high, unbelievable number OF different WORDS (20 thousand or thereabouts)((I guess somebody must have counted)---double the number of the average well-educated person. I reckon with light verse, or satire, you should be allowed some, indeed lots, of rhyming leeway.What do others think?
Charles.

[This message has been edited by Charles Doran (edited October 21, 2008).]