Speccie Vice Verse by 6th June
 

Well, most of us were there, Bill, Martin Parker and Bazza serially, and Chris O'Carroll, Brian Allgar and Jayne. Marion Shore and Robert Schechter nearly made it.

The latest competition is a golden oldie. I remember a single line from a previous run - 'Thou best, besetter, Sloth'. I'm sure we can crack this one.


No. 2750 vice verse
You are invited to provide a poem in praise of one of the seven deadly sins (16 lines max.). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 June.

John: PM your email address to me so I can e mail the Lists and Litanies poems to you. Sorry to interrupt. Got to catch a guy where you know he hangs out. I start posting the poems
on Friday.

And don't forget Brendan Beary, who recently started posting with us.

One of the winners was a (very funny) limerick that was in Bumbershoot's fractured verse issue. I wish I had raided my published Bumbershoot stock, since nothing I wrote was as good as that.

Congratulations to the winners!

Mr Beary, you are not forgotten. Haven't I seen your name before?

I remember a single line from a previous run - 'Thou best, besetter, Sloth'.

John, I don't get it. Can you enlighten me?

P.S. In titling this thread, you missed Lucy's pun: "Vice verse"

SLOTH

I never shave, I’m really far too lazy,
Although my wife complains about the stubble.
And competitions - do you think I’m crazy?
Write sixteen lines? No way, it’s too much trouble.

PRIDE

Of all the sins that I display
the one of which I am most proud
and even go so far to say
the Catholic Church should have allowed
and not have classified the sin
which currently it's classified,
because there's really no harm in
possessing it in spades, is pride.
I think the humble envy me,
and envy is a sin as well!
Someday we'll die, I guess, and see
which one of us ends up in hell.

ENVY

I envy your lust,
your pride as well,
your gluttonous ways
that will land you in hell.

I envy your anger,
your sloth and your greed.
Envy? I've got it.
There's six more I need.

LUST

Whenever there's talk about sin,
I'm proud that my sinner within
wakes up from its sloth––yes indeed!––
and fills up with gluttonous greed
to burst out in wrath as it must:
yes, no sin is vaster than lust!

Envy

My dad was just a peasant
With a house that was a hovel,
And it wasn't very pleasant
When we knew we had to grovel

To the rich men in their castles
With their satin and their silk,
When the irritating arseholes
Didn't know the price of milk.

At an ivied Oxford college
Each was learning how to rule
While we picked up scraps of knowledge
At a comprehensive school,

And the lesson that it taught us
Was the only one we mastered,
To instruct our sons and daughters
How A TORY IS A BASTARD.

Roger and Pedro, nice bits of multitasking.

John, I love "castles/arseholes" - modern poetry at its finest.

One thing that slightly worries me about this competition is that we're asked to write in praise of rather than merely about a deadly sin.

SLOTH

I want to win,
so why not praise
the deadly sin
that always sways?

Because I'm lazy
and greed is boring.
These poets are crazy––
they should be snoring.

Thanks, Brian. It's hard to compete with Roger's multitasking. I hadn't notice this was for some competition. I should hang out more in Drills and Amusements!

Pedro.

My pleasure, Pedro. I'm here for the Amusements - I don't know where the Drills come in. (Perhaps in everyday life John is a dentist?)

As for the competitions, they appear in a couple of English weekly publications, "The New Statesman"' and "The Spectator", and offer "riches beyond the dreams of avarice " - at least, that's how twenty(-five) quid might have seemed in Dr. Johnson's time.

Your four-liner has winner written all over it, Brian, leaving me again with only envy to praise.

well that's a point. what about this then?


Avarice

Look, I’ve got a bunch of money.
I can let you have some cheap.
Soft as silk and sweet as honey,
Cash enough to make you weep,

Yours to keep and yours to savour,
Yours to take and yours to spend.
Suck on money, feel the flavour,
Money makes a faithful friend.

Ask your money what’s the weather,
Ask your money what’s o’clock.
Money keeps it all together,
Money is a trusty rock.

When you have a sack of money,
You have something rich and rare
Money is your bestest bunny,
Nothing else can quite compare.

Hi Pedro,
Welcome to D & A; it's a great place to hang out! This isn't just 'some' competition - the kudos from appearing in The Spectator is enormous! The same with New Statesman, The Oldie and Literary Review.

You'll find all these comps, and their deadlines, in Drills and Amusements. (The first two are weeklies, the other two are monthlies.)
I look forward to seeing your name in one of them :)

Jayne

Ironic, that the first one to go up is about sloth! :-)

Actually, Pedro, none of us are here for the Amusement. It's all about the money!:D

Of all the seven deadly sins
that lurk along the way,
the one that hasn't lured me in
is pride, I'm proud to say.

Envy, like ivy, survives
when much lovelier things are nearby,
as an ever-green vine
that will strangle and twine
round its neighbours until they all die.
Yet should any do better—it thrives.

Frank

I love lamb that's grilled or stewed.
I love a dish that's muttony.
Why did God create such food
and then prohibit gluttony?

SLOTH

If I were a moth
my endless sloth
would keep me from the candle

where I might fly
and blindly die
of flames too hot to handle.

And so I'll praise
throughout my days
the sin of being lazy.

If I exert
I might get hurt,
and wouldn't that be crazy?

LUST

Look at my neighbor's house,
and there––look at his spouse!
Unjust.

He built a shiny fence,
but it's––in his defense––
robust.

I want to eat that peach,
the one I cannot reach
but must.

There is no greater sin,
none more encompassing,
than lust.

LUST

If lust's a sin, I love a sin!
The feeling overpowers!
Of course, I'll call the doctor in
if the sin exceeds four hours.

The sin of lust's the best:
although it may be moot,
what good are all the rest
without forbidden fruit?

Avarice is boring:
it's no fun hoarding treasure.
Sloth will keep you snoring;
wrath spikes up your blood pressure.

Envy turns you green,
gluttony gets you fat.
Pride makes you primp and preen
and nobody likes that!

Of all the deadly seven,
it's lust that rings the bell!
If there's no lust in heaven,
Well then, just give me hell!

Well done, Marion, but do you need the first stanza?

GLUTTONY

Let's hear it for gluttony,
the one sin we need!
(I own a few restaurants.
My own sin is greed).

In Praise of the Seven Deadlies

The demons request I roll over so they
can baste me more better with butter and salt.
They're always polite: whatever they say
It's "Begging you pardon," "It's all our fault."

Satan's so self abnegating and kind.
He thinks it's just wicked they way all the sins
are worded so craftily. "What sort of mind
would grasp those rules in a literal sense?"

"I totally see why you dissed the whole lot.
They lack ambiguity, sine qua non
for clarity these days and likely as not
that was done just to sew confusion."

"Yes, The Seven Deadlies is a masterful tract,
no conditions, in case's or counterfeit rules.
It's shows such an absence of breeding and tact.
The blighters who heed them--such unlettered fools."

If it's robust,
with every thrust
I feel it stronger.

I wish your lust
persisted just
a little longer.

My goodness, Marion's is very strong.

How does one decide which one to send in? :confused:

Bob, yes, I think you may be right about the first stanza. I thought maybe I needed to show it was about lust from the get-go. But maybe not?

N.B. The poem does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the poet!;)

I'm being punctilious here, folks, but Lucy does say:

"You are invited to provide a poem in praise of one of the seven deadly sins"

The poems incorporating all of them are very clever, but that's not what's being asked for.

(Only pointing it out, for the record...!)

Jayne

One way to praise a particular sin is by comparing and contrasting it with the other sins.

I think you can send in two, one under an alias. Is that right, Jayne? Or anyone?

Avarice, O avarice,
You are a deadly sin, it's true,
But avarice, O avarice,
I cannot get enough of you!

Avarice, O avarice,
Despite the warning of our Lord,
O avarice, O avarice,
You are the sin I wish to hoard!

Avarice, O avarice,
When you are gone I'm sad and blue!
O avarice, O avarice,
I cannot get my fill of you!

There's also a little ambiguity concerning one of the sins: is it Avarice, or Greed? Wikipedia has the following:

The currently recognized version of the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

I have assumed that it is Greed, which offers a wider scope. It's true that Avarice (like Gluttony) is a form of Greed, so anyone writing about it should be OK. I just hope the reverse is true.

As far as I'm aware, John, there isn't a limit to the number of entries but I'm not 100% certain about that. I'd say 'within reason' comes into it, though. I'm sure I've sent in a couple of entries in my own name before now, hoping one of them might win so I've never seen the need to give Lucy a pseudonym in case both of them do. That'd be the day! :)

Jayne

I think Roger's latest 'Avarice' poem, post #35, is a perfect example of what's asked for. It's in praise of, and it's one deadly sin.

Avarice is cupidity – greed for money. Gluttony is gourmandising – belly greed.

Jayne,

I wrote to Lucy about pseudonyms, and she replied to say that pseudonyms are welcomed, and that all entries are judged on their merits. I have very occasionally found pseudonyms useful, but if I send in more than two entries, I prefer to use "borrowed" names that are not immediately recognisable as being me for the third (and subsequent !) entries.

My thinking is this: two entries from the same competitor might make it, but with the best will in the world, if there's a third entry that is just slightly better than someone else's, would not a sense of "fair do's for all" induce the judge to choose the latter?

You may think it's a hypothetical question, but there was one occasion (the sin of pride raises its ugly head) when I won with three entries ... but that was back in the 1960's, and it never happened again!

You remember, Brian, the, presumably apocryphal story that the great Martin Fagg won ALL the prizes in a competition once.