[FOsen]

John, that's wonderful.

The English have an empty plinth.
If "empty" means the art is synth,
the plinth was empty yesterday;
it's even emptier today.



Frank

[Janet Kenny]

John, yours has greatness. That aristocratic farewell to a vanished country that still has life to spare as you know very well. Only the rich can be that profligate. "Frittered away"? NO, it made us. Well I know we're not much but we might be some day. I just watched "Stephen Fry in America". I hope he does Australia too.


(I got all weepy and nostalgic remembering Trafalgar Square. I'll try "funny" next.)

Here in London’s pulsing heart,
where western European art
looks out to Nelson’s Column, lit
through rain, where watchful lions sit—
I, Average Citizen, declare:
earth has not any sight more fair.
Now in this rare uncluttered space
an average human has a face.
Pomp may have planned it, time has shown
that humans give the life to stone.
High from the National Gallery,
art framed in cloud is what you see.
Clear-eyed, from masterworks inside,
the real world is beatified.
No painter caught vitality
more aptly than is shown in me.

[Terese Coe]

Congrats on your adjective win, Janet!

Haven't been around enough to get to this whole thread yet. A bit later.

[Janet Kenny]

Thanks Terese. We're all walking around with a lot of adjectives locked up inside us;-)

[John Whitworth]

I should have said earlier, Janet, how good I think your octosyllabic couplets are. So hard to pull off. Swift and Yeats can do it (Something in the Irish). And Andrew Marvell, but then he can pull of anything. Ah, in those days we had REAL Members of Parliament. Your octosyllabics ought to win something. Fingers crossed.

[Mary Meriam]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Does anyone send the thing as an attachment, I mean someone who has won and therefore knows it works? Bill Greenwell, what do you do? You don't actually send the thing by post, do you?

I just paste it in the body of the email with my name and mailing address and the competition number in the subject line.

Intensive plinth study now underway, though the competition is stiff already, I see.

[Janet Kenny]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

I should have said earlier, Janet, how good I think your octosyllabic couplets are. So hard to pull off. Swift and Yeats can do it (Something in the Irish). And Andrew Marvell, but then he can pull of anything. Ah, in those days we had REAL Members of Parliament.

Thank you John. I was nearly a member of parliament once--candidate at any rate--but wasn't actually a citizen so it's just as well I didn't accept. I'd have been clapped in irons. Found that out later.
A small Hungarian persuaded me against it. He said repeatedly: Believe me Janet you are NO candidate!

[Marion Shore]

My fellow Englishmen recall
the honour of our proud tradition
as you behold these Heroes all.
God save the Queen! Goddamn that pigeon!

[Mary Meriam]

LOL! That's great, Marion!!

[Gail White]

Great quatrain, Marion. I said something similar in my own entry (proposing a monument to the Unknown Poet):

With unmolested dignity
I'll face the circling sun,
For birds can do no worse to me
Than editors have done.