Oldie New Competition
 

I agree with Tessa (whom I picture as Jane Russell with glasses) that Longfellow's sonorously empty rhymes affected all the competitors here except the overall winner. Still, I was the most sonorous and empty of them all so I pocket my twenty five quid with aplomb. Bad luck on Bazza but you can't buck an intellectual Jane Russell.


COMPETITION NO 137
In the Tate is Michael Andrews's A Man Who Suddenly Fell Over (1952). We do it all the time as children but take it more seriously in older age. So a poem, please, on anything the title will fit, called The Fall. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to 'Competition 137. email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 6 May. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

Congratulations on yet another Oldie win, John, and to Bazza for his HM.

I'm off to The Oldie lunch on Tuesday - yippee!

yes indeed...
 

Well done, John, a sparky poem. Hon menches I disdain.

It's like a kiss on the cheek from your sister -- not a bad thing exactly, but not what you came to the party for. To the pecked and the paid alike, congratulations.

The two of you can afford to hold out for a win, Chris, but how about the rest of us? Where's the honor in not being mentioned?

To answer my own question, I guess the honor lies in being able to tell oneself that the damn judge never even read my entry to begin with, or else it surely would have won. A mention tells you that attention was paid and your entry was ultimately found lacking.

[quote=John Whitworth;193369]. We do it all the time as children but take it more seriously in older age.

But of course when you are young you simply fall. When you are aged, you 'have a fall'.

No, Bob, you have to view it that a mention tells you that attention was paid and your entry was found to be pretty darn good but not QUITE as good as the winners.

Easy to say, from an eternal optimist...my glass is always FULL, not half full :D

This was a villanelle once. I think it's better this way.

The Fall

He went before to burn in Hell.
He drooped and dropped and then he died.
The good Lord smote him in his pride,
Pride comes before a fall. He fell,

With dancing devils to abide,
In everlasting fires to dwell.
Being left with nothing else to sell.
He sold his soul. At least he tried,

The moving finger moves to spell
Naught for your comfort is supplied
And nowhere else is left to hide.
The Wrath of God was loosed pell-mell.

It’s hot in there. It’s cold outside.
He left a charred and sooty smell.
He went before to burn in Hell.
He drooped and dropped and then he died.

THE FALL

I once was up,
but down I fell.
I guess I do not
balance well,

or something made me
trip and fall.
A roller skate?
A rubber ball?

But now I've learned,
to my surprise,
I like it here.
Why should I rise?

Standing up
was such a bore!
I plan to stay here
on the floor.

Such poise, Roger!

It's disconcerting and perhaps appalling
to contemplate how much around us falls.
Each blessed evening somewhere night is falling,
there's rain and morals, Thursdays, rubber balls,
whose natural state is falling, or they fell,
or seem about to do so; for a tide
of information makes it hard to tell.
There's leap years, by-elections, and there's Pride;
there's Man, who's exiled from a state of grace
and always seems much downer at the mouth
when noting wits and arches, arse and face,
each day are resolutely headed south.
There's standards, confidence, and expectations,
a sparrow, soldiers, tears, a host of nations.
Rome fell, and Lana Turner, and Niagara.
Screw chicken soup, our souls could use Viagra.

Frank

Well, Frank, I was going to make an attempt but that's going to take some beating! :D

Impressive, Frank!

Terrific final couplet, Frank.

The Fall
 

Who coined that silly phrase of ‘falling’ pregnant?
I never use it. (Shouldn’t it be ‘getting’?)
“Our Shazza fell...” No, that’s not how it happened!
Your daughter didn’t trip; it’s heavy petting
and being on her back that did the business.
You fall on hard times; old folk often fall
(or, rather, ‘have’ one). Men fall off a ladder,
but falling pregnant? That’s not right at all.
I do apologise for my insistence;
we must correct such ignorance. It’s ‘got’
or ‘getting’. No-one’s ‘fallen up the duff’ yet,
so ‘falling’ pregnant? Absolutely NOT.

(I sent my recent TDE 'lemon' poem too, on the off-chance. :rolleyes:)

Wrong thread

You know, Jayne, that falling pregnanat has annoyed me for years. It used to be a working clss usage but now it has spread like a fungus. In my young days people GOT pregnant. Nice poem.

Or Harry preggers, eh, John? (A condition that would follow the combination of Harry champers and Harry starkers. Good Oxbridge slang, now fallen into abeyance.)

Ah, those were the days when one referred to Pride and Prejudice as "Priggers and Preggers"...

Fall/get
There's a nice distinction, surely. "Get" implies intention, even effort.
"Fall" suggests an accident (of the sort that might happen to fallen women).

Bun in the oven, Ann, in the club, and other even more regrettable expressions.

I agree with George about the falling. In the sixties I worked in a Birmingham Family Planning clinic and the word was always used for the unplanned pregnancy which was a disaster, social or financial or both.

One took a chance, one was unlucky, one fell. It's actually a circumstance wholly distinct from the state of grace achieved by a planned, longed-for pregnancy. I will now shut up and put this in a poem, where it belongs.

After all, there are precedents:

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.

Eliot. Wasteland. And if that's not "falling", I don't know what is!

THE FALL

We sometimes fall but do not fall.
It may be falling sick,
it may be falling deep in love
or falling for a trick,

it may be falling out of grace
or falling into debt.
Let's hope, whatever fall we fall.
we've not hit bottom yet.