I enjoyed writing my own blurb in verse form. Since Alicia Stallings did it first, I got her go-ahead to start a thread of verse blurbs. So blurb your own book - modestly, hucksterly, or anyway you'd like. Or blurb someone else's - whether famous or a Spherian(good-natured only), classic or contemporary. Or maybe write a blurb for someone who asked you to blurb their book - and it bites. Or something else creative and blurbly.

Bugsy

BLURB ON A BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE

No, I’m not Dorothy Parker.
Her verse is far funnier, darker.
And no, I’m not Ogden Nash.
I lack his –shall we say?– panache.
And sorry, I’m no Wendy Cope.
Don’t purchase this book with that hope.
And yet I can make you one promise:
I'm funnier than Dylan Thomas.

Verbs! Nouns! Metaphors!

My name is Michael Cantor and I come
to poetry too late in life to bring
you unaffected verse – I bear the sum
of years in suits and neckties. Dreams that sing
of balance sheets and factories, and much less,
crowd every line – old broken Yiddish curses,
half-told stories, memories that mess
and turn around my words in visa verses.

My brain retains with crisp and seamless care
ten recipes for boneless leg of lamb;
a fourth round draft choice jostles Baudelaire;
all cram and jam to form an anagram
of names, dates, faces, places; here you’ll find
the rants and ransom of a twisted mind.

To be accompanied by a photograph of the author posed in front of an acre of bookcases, draped in tweed, and staring pensively into the middle distance.

R's Poetica

Another poetess recalls her past.
What else is there? The hopeless here and now
is too abstract. She sees herself, aghast:
a frumpy, fatass, sex-obsessed old cow.

She's like a silken tent, 'cause she's so fat
it takes a circus tent to span her rump.
Who wants to read a sonnet about that?
Better to let old lovers prime the pump.

Once she was thin and trampy. That's the ticket
to successful women's poetry! Back then,
she had more guys than you could shake a stick at.
Her verse is full of boinked and boozy men.

And though her diction's graceful as a wedgie,
she prides herself on having once been "edgy."

Poems to be Traded for Baklava

.................Jan D. Hodge

What have we here? More soporific verse
by some immodest, word-drunk amateur
who put his trust in matchbook ads—or worse?
Has anyone even heard of him . . . (or her?)?

A writer “widely read and prized” has said:
“What he [ah! “he”] achieves with words is near
impossible.” Some friend, no doubt (and read
by whom?), the praises paid for with a beer.

Why bother, when so many “poets” crow
about their scribbles? Yet can you foretell
when a fine reading might reveal the stuff
of honest wit and music? We’ll never know
if it’s immortal, will we? What the hell,
enjoy it for the moment. That’s enough.

Blurb For My Nonexistent Book

Humbily, bumbily,
Mary Elizabeth,
trying to write a bit,
struck a dry spell;

panicking scarily,
semihysteric’ly,
cried out forlornly “Its
all gone to hell!”

Buy this! Be the hapless owner
of the works of Julie Stoner!
Say, buy two! Make one a loaner!
Find another victim!

One part prim to three profane!
Pour them into someone's brain!
Laugh until you have a pain
at how we both have tricked him!

I

When Poultryface Peggy Met Spittoon Larue
alone is enough to make this worth a look.
If you like such things, it's a major value'-
by volume it seemed to be half the damn book.

II

I promised the author I'd write him a blurb,
so...
"This is a book one should kick to the curb!"

Bugsy




[This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited May 23, 2006).]

For Your Delectation

If you read for poets' flaws,
sicknesses and foofaraws,
here is deathless catachresis
suitable for exegesis.

Blurb

Did you ever wonder why
poems no longer command
the audience of days gone by?
Read this. You'll understand.

El Blurbo

These poems I’ve begotten
in my mind’s own Fallopians
are as silk is to cotton
or as hope to utopians.

Of Fantin-Latour
they’re the verbal equivalents,
both bright and obscure
with a tender ambivalence.

O they’re full fathom deep.
They whisper and clatter.
They make a great leap.
They shine and they matter.

Edgy and clever,
formal and right.
None could dissever
their wings from their flight.

Here verb meets noun
with galvanic force.
Not likely you’ll come down
with buyer’s remorse.

HONEST BLURBS

1.

I hope you don't think that it's weird,
but since no one else volunteered,
.... I'll do my own blurbing:
.... "However disturbing,
this book's not as bad as I feared."

2.

Of all the books you could peruse,
filled up with facts you can use,
.... this, when you're done,
.... will leave you with none,
but also with nothing to lose.

3.

This book that you hold is my first,
and thus, I'm afraid, it is cursed.
.... Whatever I do,
.... one blurb must be true:
'This volume so far is his worst.'



PS--
cross-posted with Kate, who actually wrote a real good one! I especially like the first two stanzas, though the whole thing ain't shabby.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited May 31, 2006).]

Yeah, Kate, what's up with writing something good?!?! And I bet it's even better than I think, cause I don't understand the second stanza.


Bugsy

Book buyers, before you adjourn
consider this, "A Spleeny Luther'n."
The poems are bad, but you will learn
how to write stuff that people spurn;
if its ideas cause concern,
on cold nights it's a thing to burn.

Robert Meyer


[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited May 31, 2006).]