We KNOW that modern  poetry is progressive, and inherently superior to that of the past.

This is my private reading of a new offering – for your eyes and ears only:

Ahem.  (stands at microphone, shuffles a paper)

What I

find less than arresting: stilted musings gem-set

in ardent verbiage.

recherché semantics, florid phrases facing a withering sun

or policing of metaphor –

until handcuffed: Italic jewel thief caught on surveillance

Sudden bewildering

spaces with odd punctuation;  ?  &

inward dithering semi-confessions in serpentine

verse.  Badder (or worse)  annoying line

breaks/

cloying internal half – rhymes,

overwrought.     Over-edited;

over-thought until  you want to see

what’s on TV instead.   As if

the poet’s every random musing was so

essential.  Reverential semi-precious mythos

(Siren’s distant waves echo, shipwrecked rocks: Ossifer,  ossifer –

it’s only boring poetry…

                        I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it)

again.

(Shuffles papers, sits down)

Did you enjoy it?  I didn’t. The 17 hours I labored over it were grueling. OK.  Now for some oh-so-passé highly-structured message-oriented religious poetry. This woman‘s only claim to fame is that she wrote America the Beautiful after ascending the  Rocky Mountains by wagon and mule as a visiting English professor at Colorado College in 1893.

[from Streams in the Desert, Sep. 18]

YESTERDAY’S GRIEF

The rain that fell a-yesterday is ruby on the roses,

Silver on the poplar leaf, and gold on willow stem;

The grief that chanced a-yesterday is silence that incloses

Holy loves when time and change shall never trouble them.

The rain that fell a-yesterday makes all the hillsides glisten,

Coral on the laurel and beryl on the grass;

The grief that chanced a-yesterday has taught the soul to listen

For whispers of eternity in all the winds that pass.

O faint-of-heart, storm-beaten, this rain will gleam tomorrow,

Flame within the columbine and jewels on the thorn,

Heaven in the forget-me-not; though sorrow now be sorrow,

Yet sorrow shall be  beauty in the magic of the morn.

Katherine Lee Bates (1859 -1929)

Back to my day job.     I bid thee farewell, amazing  muses of our amusing mazes.