Fenster the Formalist here (you all know that the epigrammatic voice is often exaggeratedly arrogant and that the narrator here is not neccessarily myself):
More Than Slant
Insouciant rhymes, each leaves the other pairless.
Are they "without a care" or merely careless?
Too Far
A product of Miss Moore’s judicious brain—
“Not in Latin, not in shorthand, but in plain
American which cats and dogs can read”—
Her compliment to Williams. Do we need
The lesson she implied? We’ve learned it quite.
Poetry’s now what cats and dogs and can write.
Their Criterion
About my verse they say, “Nobody talks like that”.
Of ballet do they say, “Nobody walks like that”?
Witless
You say I’m no Ben Jonson and it’s true:
No more, no less, Ben Jonson than are you.
and one that self-deflates:
The Muse Distributes
The epigram will best display his wit.
Its couplet length can fully compass it.
[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited July 04, 2008).]
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