Recently in poetry Category

This is one of the cleverest things I've seen in a while.

The back story is that the assistant head of English at Park Hall needed the red hand truck (that's a "porter's trolley", for those who don't get the American dialect), and asked for its return:

We're looking for an errant red hand truck. Anybody borrowed it or seen it? Thanks. --Mike

The word "errant" sparked a flood of responses spoofing famous poems.

I can't resist, and I apologise in advance to the memory of Ogden Nash.

Lost hand truck
Is bad luck
But mimic
Is comic.

Moving house saps time and energy for blogging, not that I'm much of a high-energy blogger, but still. Figure I should say something.

Chuck Jones once related this story:

A young man was once sent fresh from Columbia University with a mutual friend's introduction to Robert Frost. Frost scanned the young man's writings, then looking quizzically up through his craggy white brows he asked, "What do you do, son?" The young man drew himself up proudly; he was, after all, one with the great Frost. "I am a poet," he said. Frost gently answered, "The term 'poet' is a gift word, son; you cannot give it to yourself."

Those days are long gone. But even if they weren't, I've officially been called a poet by another poet. So I guess I'm a poet.

Even more than that, I've now actually been paid for a poem. But for the full story, you'll have to wait.

Has anyone ever said "Season's Greetings" to you? I know it's on cards everywhere, on multiple continents. But has anyone actually said it to you?

In my case, it's happened once. Probably about 25 years ago.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about.