Speccie Dear John
 

No. 2593: Dear John
You are invited to submit a Dear John letter in the style of an author or poet of your choice (16 lines/150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2593’ by 23 April or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.

I think that looks very inviting and I expect a large entry from you clever people. You're good at parody, better than you seem to be at anagrams. Auden came up with an anagram for Tamburlaine - a nubile tram. Quite good but not a winner. Wystan Hugh Auden is HAW! HUG NASTY NUDE!

Please note that prizes are now £30, plus a fiver extra for the top gun. You can see that our fame has reached as far as lucy for our thread on 'Anagram Hell'. Lets get in among them prizes.

I have to tell you I won £30 for my Saint Simeon Stylites and the overall winning Diogenes is a gem. By Martin Parker, who is a real person. I think the other winners are all pseudonyms, probably of Bill Greenwell's.

Oh well done John! You didn't have to tell us but for what it's worth I would have given you the 35 quid.

DEAR JOHNNY

Johnny, Johnny, here's your shoe.
Hop on out by half past two.

Half past two is much too late!
Please be gone by half past eight.

Pack your bags, get out of town,
And I will give you a half a crown.

Yours,
Mother Goose

Oh yes I did have to tell you. Thanks for your best wishes, Jim. I look forward toyour take on the new one. I've found an old sonnet I wrote for another competition. It didn't win but I'll try it again. I don't THINK the other competition was a Speccie one anyway. A dear John in the style of Sylvia Plath would be fun, but I can't do Sylvia Plath.

FROSTY

Some say the world will end in fire,
  some say in ice.
Though you were once my heart's desire
and often made me feel like fire,
now that I've considered twice,
alas, I'm pretty sure I know
enough to say you're more like ice
  and if you go
  it would be nice.

Shoot! Another time waster!

Way to go, John! And congrats to all the Bill Greenwells, whoever they may be!

Well, as one Stylites to another, congrats. Remember those two importan words, John: DUTY FREE.

Dear Jean:

Because I do not wish to burn again,
Because I do not wish again to yearn,
Because between the burning and the yearning
I do not wish, again, to turn,
I write to you, dear Jean, aux Dardanelles,
To tell you I have had a little fling--
Nothing untoward, only a bit of dancing--
With one Miss Haigh-Wood,
Which has led, sic is insisto, to a ring--
Ab initio ad finem, the sort of thing
Which is more lasting
Than any saint's soon-ended fasting
Or a perishable bunch of hyacinths.
I hope you're getting out down there
To see the Turkish sights,
mon semblable, mon frere.

No one said it had to be a parody, eh? I could send off a poem in my own style, n'est-ce pas?

Good on yer, John!

Dear John,

How could I love thee? When I count the ways
thee findest to deceive me, day and night;
and how thee carried on when out of sight,
the wonder is that I'd not flee thy place.
So now I will despise thee all my days;
despise thy tete a tetes by candle light,
despise the thought that thee wert Mr Right;
despise thy visage and thy lust for praise.
Here in gay Paree I live again!
My love for thee is now dead as the dodo,
in Notre Dame I hang out by The Seine
and hath no grief that thee hath lost thy mojo.
Smiles, oh cheers! A love bereft of pain;
oh thee ne'er rang my bell like Quasimodo.