[John Whitworth]

This is the sort of thing I like. And you do too, I'm sure.

No. 2792: pen portrait

You are invited to submit a portrait, in verse, of one poet by another (please identify both and 16 lines maximum). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 3 April.

[Brian Allgar]

(William Wordsworth by Lewis Carroll)

You are old, Father William, and bleat like a sheep
As you blather of some “Intimation”;
You gambol and leap where it’s hilly and steep,
Or you lurk by a lakeside location
Composing your verses, oblivious, deep
In the ponderous throes of creation.
The daffodils peep and the nightingales cheep
As you muse on the sad incantation
Of the solitary lass who doth sickle and reap,
Though her song quite eludes explication.

Your poems, a vast indigestible heap,
Would profit from ruthless truncation,
Yet on nights when insomnia maketh me weep
For a draught that will offer sedation,
I find that your verses can put me to sleep
Far quicker than strong medication.

[Nigel Mace]

Brian - After your splendid Henry you are positively on fire!

[John Whitworth]

Good Heavens, Brian!

T.S. Eliot by Lewis Carroll

I thought I saw the shadow of a merchant banker's clerk.
I looked again and saw it was a poet in the park.
His eyes behind his spectacles were dangerous and dark.

I thought I saw his published work in multilingual verse.
I looked again and saw it was the pattern for a hearse.
'Our age,' he said, 'is sad and mad and getting worse and worse.'

I thought I saw a vision of a Waste Land gone to seed.
I looked again and saw it was the Athanasian Creed.
'The rats are in my head,' I said, 'but is this what we need?'

I thought I saw a poet tall and spectral like a ghost.
I looked again and saw it was the Anglo-Catholic host
In Fortnum's, drinking China tea and eating buttered toast.

[John Whitworth]

If Carroll, why not Lear?

Dylan Thomas by Edward Lear

How unpleasant to know Mr Dylan,
With his diction so mannered and poncy,
A sponger, a souse and a villain,
The rollicking Rimbaud of Swansea.

He was kissed by the Muse in his youth.
She had honed him a talent for making it.
But it’s difficult telling the truth
So he thought he was better off faking it

With ridiculous, ranting productions
That he keened like a crazy old monk,
When he wasn’t attempting seductions
Or succeeding in getting blind drunk.

There’s lots more I could say of this bard,
Though scarcely in front of the chillun,
This Cambrian barrel of lard.
How unpleasant to know Mr Dylan.

[Brian Allgar]

(Philip Larkin by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - a bit of "recycling" from another comp.)

It is an old Librarian
Who stoppeth at my door.
I’m far too press’d to see a guest,
But can’t escape the bore.

“My wretched Mum drank too much rum,
Which led to my conception,
For she and Dad were very bad
At using contraception.

So they did swive, and I’m alive,
Though not of my own choosing;
I blame them still for every ill,
Especially my boozing.

He thinketh best who drinketh least,
Yet, shoudst thou crave a ‘bender’,”
Exclaimed my guest, “Be careful lest
A Poet thou engender!”

[Rob Stuart]

Pam Ayres by e e cummings

m-a-e-r-y-s-p-a
teeth
teeth
did(ntlo)ok
’
b!ut
o(p)p
PAYRESAM
<(o)rt
u(nit
y
)
kNoCkEd>pamayres
*

[Roger Slater]

Dorothy Parker by Wordsworth

Behold her single in the field,
One of those cute Algonquin lasses.
I'd make a pass but she would not yield.
They never do, the ones with glasses.

[basil ransome-davies]

John, you have Dylan Thomas down a treat, but what an insult (fully intended, I know) to Rimbaud.

[John Whitworth]

Absolutely not. Rimbaud is the bees knees. I have always thought so. But somebody called the welsh wizard that. It may even have been Dylan himself. Actually I don't think Dylan's poetry is by any means all bad. He was a drunken twat, but lots of poets were that. Were and are. Not US, of course, Bazza.