Below is some advise I received shortly after I arrived at Erato in 2003, from some sage whose Identity I have long forgotten. The bad thing about it was that it didn't like my piece. The good thing about it was that it defined what a good piece should include. I have used this as a checklist for my pieces, ever since. Some might say this unknown master is responsible for all my success, and who am I to say different.
Sorry, Bugsy, but to me this one is trivial greeting card stuff of the Not-Ready-or-Deserving-of-the-Deep-End category. It's the kind of ditty that gives rhymed, metrical verse a bad name - the stuff free-versers point to when they dis' our efforts. There's been a plethora of this on Metrical, and it bothers me to see it migrating to the Deep End without something being said.
There's nothing awful about it, but neither is there anything very good. It's not particularly funny, the language is ordinary, you have an archaic rhyme-driven phrase in L6, and the meter falls apart in the final line just when you need a strong ending.
Compare this to the sophisticated rhymes and language and verbal counter-point of Lo's Monkey Girl (which you apparently felt required too much effort to read to function as Light Verse). In my opinionated opinion there is a level of craft and - and wit - in Monkey Girl that make it truly poetry, not just a rhymed ditty - and that’s what I feel is missing in your work.
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[I dunno who he wrote this to – may or may not have been me]
To me, the difference between doggerel and poetry is the application of craft - wordplay, turns on language, creation of new words, puns, clever alliteration, strange and unexpected rhymes, introduction of unusual words, etc. And if you can also cross-cut that humor with additional layers of meaning or possible perception - irony, tragedy, uncertainty, political meanings - then you're cooking! I don't see any of this in your work. You appear to concentrate on simple cartoon situations and very simple rhymes (usually, only on the even lines, and too often depending on a name to help force a rhyme) and - as I indicated earlier - I don't think that's enough.
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