Well, Mark, I didn’t want to be too scathing — rather my usual restrained and diffident self
— but yes, breaks of this sort do rather put me in mind of
Private Eye’s “E. J. Thribb” (who has been 17½ for about the last 30 years):
Lines on the Death of Chairman Mao
by E.J. Thribb
So.
Farewell then
Chairman Mao.
You are the
Last of the
Great revolutionary
Figures. You
And I
Had little in
Common
Except that
Like me
You were a poet.
Though how you
Found time
To write poems
In addition to
Running a
Country of
800 million people
Is baffling
Frankly.
It cracks me up that sites like this
http://poetry.nanvaent.org/vl/author.asp?id=178
include him among their Vers Libre poets: Thribb, E. J. (he comes right after Thoreau, Henry David in their listing). You have to wonder if maybe they haven’t seen the joke.
Henry
[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited June 08, 2005).]