On James

I was going to review Cultural Amnesia (he should have called it Not Forgotten), an extraordinary book I'd recommend anyone, but the idea sort of withered. Here's a squib instead.

A clue to his thinking behind the book comes when I ask him how he rates his poetry. “I rate it very highly, actually,” says James, who reserves his self-deprecation for the things that don’t matter to him. “And it’s gratifying that as the years go by, the rating gets higher. As a showbusiness name, I was crossed off the list of the serious. But that problem is going away and now I’m getting estimated somewhere near my true worth, which I think is fairly high up the second rank.”

His ambition to be the serious poet
seriously marred by missing talent,
he turns to light verse. He is a hit.
Turning back to seriousness, he forgets what is missing,
...........and writes seriously lightly.

alliteration

the red rose roils its rampant reds
and blue's the blouse where blossom blows;
where a greengage gobbet, half-gobbled, goes,
yellowing the blue, which yoghurty bled.

god, isn't alliteration shit?

Modern Poem

A flower grew
in its garden;

the one flower
in its garden

with hazel eyes.

N. Duploom
variation on the theme by Ron Paste

The fork
and its companion, similar
in shape

the spoon,
are both of them items of cutlery
as yet

in name
or in truth uncommandeered
by gangs

of men,
violent, lawless, causing much trouble.
Stalkers,

and those
psychos dubbed serial killers by police
also

have done
their pretty bit to make tawdry the name
of this

very
wonderful instrument; as has been
sullied

likewise
unforgivably that wondrous instrument by which
we, they,

name it.