[John Whitworth]

Innards

For PMN

Oh, blow the trumpets, bang the gongs,
Tell the stories, sing the songs
Of those who seek to right the wrongs
Of innards.

Some are native, others foreign
Marshall, Shatzki, Barrett, Warren -
They all discovered more and more on
Innards.

What was it made these heroes choose
The inclination to enthuse
About the ceaseless squeeze and ooze
Of innards?

Oh, stuff your ifs and hush your buts,
Think twice about your tasteful tuts
And praise all those who have the guts
for innards

You too, good Sir, are on this list –
A gastroenterologist
To whom I trust each loop and twist
Of innards.

[John Whitworth]

The poem you are trying to think of which dances along to the same metre (a kind of rhymed Sapphic in general shape) is probably the one Byron sent his publisher complaining that other Lords (Oxford and Waldegrave) got better publishing contracts than he did. It ends:

But now this sheet is nearly cramm’d,
So, if you will, I shan’t be shamm’d,
And if you won’t, you may be damned,
My Murray.

Perhaps there are others. Some Spherean will surely know.

What I like about this, beyond its technical expertise and the goddam lilt of it, is its sheer inconsequentiality. Who the hell is PMN, for a start? Marshall, Shatski et al. – a quick trawl through google reveals to be men who have indeed written about innards. They would be (I suppose) gastro-enterologists.

Of course PMN could refer to the PMN count. The what? The polymorphonuclear count, you dummy. Your gastro-enterologist conducts such a count in cases, among others, of cirrhosis. Ahah! You should have laid off the sauce, good poet. You really should have. I hope all went well.

I do agree it is a mystery why doctors choose the specialisms they do. I knew a girl, a pretty girl too, the wife of the politician Robin Cook, who won the VD Medal at Edinburgh University. And what (except money of course) could ever prevail upon a medico to opt for dentistry?

It may be harder than I thought to find other examples of this stanza. Intensive googling came up only with the devout Charles H. Gabriel.

If I have craved for joys that are not mine,
If I have let my wayward heart repine,
Dwelling on things of earth, not things divine-
Good Lord, forgive!

[Orwn Acra]

I like this one a lot; it's quite clever and congratulations for fitting "gastroenterologist" in with the meter. I'd like to see the title changed; a title that faintly touches on the subject matter (because I love when titles do that!) because it's the kind of poem that could benefit from it, something like "How to Play Your Eternal Organs Overnight" or "the Last of the Microbe Hunters" or "Escape Pod from the World of Medical Observations" but not those specifically because I just stole them from Stereolab.

Yeah! It's a good poem.

[Michael Cantor]

Well done and clever. The meter, the rhymes, the language, all work - there is a flow of thought through the poem - and it's intelligent. Plus extra points for probably being the first poet in history to use "gastroenterologist" in a rhymed quatrain! One of my favorites.

My only caveat is that it's a little too inwardly driven with the list of names in S2. They would mean nothing to anybody but another gastro-whatsis. The poem is so delightful that I think it can easily carry an additional stanza, a new S3, that humorously expands on what Marshall, Shatzki, Barrett, Warren did - gets into the kishkas, so to speak - and makes it more universal.

[Roger Slater]

Excellent. My favorite so far. This poem deserves to be read alongside Chris O'Carroll's poem about a sigmoidoscopy:


http://www.the-chimaera.com/Feb2009/...O_Carroll.html

[Petra Norr]

I wish I liked this more. S3 is really good and I enjoyed the pun in S4. The rest of the poem feels like it's skating on the surface of a better poem, one that could have been realized but wasn't. The language in this strikes me as "lazy", for want of a better word. For example the opening words: "Oh, blow the trumpets, bang the gongs, tell the stories, sing the songs." And the second stanza is almost flat. The poet didn't quite put in the extra work to make this extra special, or even merely special.

[Janet Kenny]

I love this one. Surprising and funny. We could all write more stanzas now that we have been shown how and I must confess I am repressing some very saucy rhymes. Bravo.
Janet

[Roger Slater]

nevermind

nevermind

[Susan McLean]

Like many occasional poems (and I assume this was one), this poem showers a lot of brio, style, and wit on something that may not seem very consequential to someone who doesn't know the person and occasion. It strikes me as being very clever and adept, but not especially funny, except in terms of the distance between the high style of the poem and the low subject matter. The allusions to individuals probably amused the gastroenterologist in question, but are not likely to ring bells with the general public. The public needn't recognize the names to get the general point of the verses, but they may feel shut out of a private joke, to some extent.

Susan

[Martin Elster]

I believe Shatzki is misspelled. I think it should be Schatzki.