[Brian Allgar]

John, your Betjeman/Eliot is a treat. And with your last line:

xxBring us poetry that sings

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

[John Whitworth]

Actually some of Eliot sings rather poignantly. I've always thought Prufrock was singable. And some of those early lyrics too. He got religion which didn't do him any good at all. But Betj sings more for my money.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Father, this is sloppy stuff;
You speak to God right off the cuff
In meter which is out of whack;
Couple-coloured Holstein white and black.

Your scansion’s slack, your rhythm’s sprung;
For lesser wrongs, I’ve seen lads hung.
Why mess with stuff you can’t do well?
Please stick to candle, book, and bell.

Be happy with your cloistered life,
You’ll never have a fractious wife;
Instead you can explore the joys
That clerics seek with younger boys.

(A predilection, I’ll admit
I suffer from myself, a bit;
And hint about, from time to time
In meter, using proper rhyme.)

[John Whitworth]

Douglas, I think that is apt and funny.

[Nigel Mace]

Douglas - deft!

[Rob Stuart]

Hallelujah!
Satan got slung the fuck out of Heaven.

We can’t have him giving people fruit, can we?
Feeding the starving
Without even trying to turn a profit is obscene.

And so was asking questions
About how that fascist bully boy God runs things,
Isn’t that right, Mr Milton?

So yes, you can just fuck off, Satan.
Spend eternity in the agonies of Tartarus.
That’ll teach you to try and think for yourself.

I bet that moron Bush
And that loathsome toad Blair would approve,
But it makes me sick to my fucking guts, chum.

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

[Brian Allgar]

A good one, Douglas. And you're right, if they can't rhyme or scan properly, let's hang 'em.

[Rob Stuart]

when John first took a look
at Ezra’s book
he couldn’t make any sense of it
so he wiped his glasses on his shirt
thinking that dirt
on the lenses might be the reason
although it wasn’t
and he looked again
bits of it looked a bit like English he thought
but other bits were in Chinese
and reading that isn’t exactly a breeze
at least not if you’re from Luton
Pound
was a lot less fun than walking your faithful hound
John decided as he reached for his doggie’s lead
and his doggie readily agreed

[Graham King]

“Mr Wells’ latest literary effusion, unappealing, appals. Its few characters are lazy stereotypes. Defiantly-blinkered astronomer; vanquished soldier, compensating through unrealistic extravagant ambition; curate, developing religious mania... While I am no apologist for English army or clergy, here are men of straw indeed! The journalist ‘hero’ becomes despairingly suicidal, reflecting this novel’s hollow heart: self-flagellating defeatism!
The plot, clumsy as any moribund walking tripod, clanks heavily to its end. Sickeningly, Wells plays a ‘God on our side’ card, late in this game (deus ex microbia !); equivocating though: “To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the future ordained.” (Evidently Martians do conquer Venus.)
Outrageously, one clumsily injected theme (blood predation) blatantly plagiarises my ‘Dracula’ published last year. Could Wells not devise some equally horrific, more plausible motivating predilection– perhaps, aliens harvesting specimens for experimentation à la Doctor Moreau ?
(I suggest this, gratis, for any future editions… pending legal action.)”

[Date references: Wells’ War of the Worlds, 1898;
Stoker’s Dracula, 1897; Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, 1896]

[Brian Allgar]

'The Faerie Queene' reviewed by W. Shakespeare

What spiteful Muse it was who rashly urgèd
This undertaking on poor Edmund Spenser
I cannot say. In verse obscure and turgid,
No tale was ever drearier or denser.
The author owneth that his dull intention’s
To wrap ‘in allegorical devices’
A list of cloudy virtues - their declension’s
A prospect that but meagrely entices.
‘Tis said Elizabeth was mighty pleased
(But none can name for me the fool who said it),
And Spenser by a pension was much eased,
E’en though Her Majesty hath never read it.

Yet do I thank thee, Edmund; while no Orpheus,
Thy song hath brought me to the arms of Morpheus.