[Susan McLean]

Sorry, but I removed this. It was a mess metrically, and I am not sure it is worth trying to salvage.

Susan

[basil ransome-davies]

What a pig this one is. A stinker. rather non-Jaspistos IYSWIM. It boxes you in. I've tried to fight my way out in a perverse fashion, knifing the sentries in the back, but I'm not wildly happy with my first shot. If anyone out there feels like helping me out with some comments...

Why oh why has no one learned the lesson?
The masses only want illicit thrills.
They lack the taste for civilised expression
And can't acquire the proper language skills.

I mind when my instructions would elicit
Well-formed responses, courteously meant,
From banks and such. Good English, how I miss it.
Now keyboard monkeys rule. A sad descent.

My so-called secretary, for example,
Who now and then will deign to type a letter,
Writes barbarous solecisms (here's a sample:
'Our buisness gols'), but I can't get a better.

There's something rotten,' quoth the gloomy Dane.
He might have meant our culture. Heavy-hearted,
I see how standards lessen, sink and wane
hourly, and as for tax – don't get me started!


Bazza

[Roger Slater]

STUDENT ESSAY ON HAMLET

The Barred is grate! I love the Deign
who said "Doobie, or knot doobie!"
(He mite have bean an Earl ore Thane.
At any rate, a roiled tree

who found his four chins in dissent).
Butt if wee dane too he'd the lessen
from the Earl's predictament,
hear's the morale iamb guessin'

Shakespeare'd wont us two illicit
and from witch their's no descent:
Murder's fowl, a sin, elicit,
unlesson daddy gives consent.

[John Whitworth]

Oh I like that. Crazy as hell. I think you'd better kill the apostrophe. No student of that kind would ever use one except it were of the grocer's variety

[basil ransome-davies]

mea culpa indeed. Tired, drunk & soured by residual bitterness against this comp, I omitted 'learned' from line one.

Bazza

[John Whitworth]

Forgive me, Bazza, I put the 'learned' back, supposing you didn't know how to. But if you do know, forgive me. Can standards lessen? I fear they cannot. What lessens that is a trochaic disyllable and fits? I'm afraid I can't think. But there must be something. There ought to be a dictionary of that kind, a sort of meld of Roget and a rhyming, metrical dictionary.

If I think of it while I am hoovering - Wednesday is hoover day, or rather Dyson day - then I SHALL RETURN!

[basil ransome-davies]

Well, you're right, John, though I've sneaked worse things past comp judges & the off-key verb in the pleonastic sequence might symptomatise the actual ignorance & philistinism of the pompous commercial oaf who claims to be upholding 'standards of literacy'.

However... any suggestions gratefully received. Dysons are magic, aren't they? We just upgraded from a Miele cylinder, & the first vacuuming brought up tons of stuff the Miele obviously hadn't touched.

Mainly cat hairs.

[John Whitworth]

Of course some of the things the Dyson brings up are chunks of carpet.

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Bazza,

You're being too hard on yourself (#22):
'I'm not wildly happy with my first shot'.

Heck - I'd be chuffed if I'd written it (haven't attempted this one, yet).
S2L1 confused me momentarily, till I realised you meant the alternative meaning of 'I mind':

I mind when my instructions would elicit
Well-formed responses, courteously meant,
From banks and such....

How about 'Time was, when my instructions would elicit', - which would be less ambiguous?

[John Whitworth]

Bazza is obviously a Scot, though you wouldn't think so with a name like that. To the Scots 'I mind' means I remember.

Oh well do I mind
In the days of lang syne
When I was a lassie sae wee
Whenever I'd gang
To dae anything wrang,
My mither wad sae this tae me....