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Blue Remembered Quills

Stuart Butler

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It’s more than my Wordsworth,
To tell you, my good friend Crispi,
How a poet should run Chelski,
But if you are going to be a big Spender,
Make sure the Pound Burns no hole in your pocket.
Do not put Coleridge and the Ancient Mariner together,
One suffers from piles and substance abuse,
The other from extreme wedding day OCD.
The parliamentarian and visually challenged Milton
Should not be placed as a couplet with Pope.
Upfront, you could put Owen
Just behind the enjambment,
With Elliot in the midfield wasteland.
If the pitch muddies and you need it forked,
Heaney is your man, he has no Ayres and graces;
Langland and Caedmon are more than useful here too,
But Yeats will swan around too much.
For something out of the Auden ary,
Play Brooke whenever away in Europe,
But never Homer.
For speed of movement and Motion,
Whitman is your man, but not Spenser,
Although the Faery Queene is a possibility.
If the pitch is water-logged, go for De la Mere,
Avoid lovers of summer sports,
Such as Tennyson
And is Byron sober and fit enough?
Johnson would be good for cleaning boots,
But a word in your Shelley like, please,
The Brownings are too much into each other,
Boccaccio dives too much.
And as for a romantic approach,
Keats don’t prosper.
Virgil, Horace and Chaucer travel well,
But ee cummings is too small.
Does Frost really know the path to goal?
Talking of which,
Do not put Hughes and Plath together upfront.
Grey’s good if you lose,
And Crabbe if you lose your ground.
Don’t pick WH Davies,
He just stares too much.
I Betjeman that you pick Houseman,
But it’s Hobson’s Joyce about Swinburne –
Although did he once play for Wolves?
As for swapping shirts with Shakespeare
Or pulling pints with Petrarch,
Bottoms on seats in midsummer
Is every oligarch’s dream,
And this advice should keep the stanzas filled.

© Stuart Butler

Notes

As dictated to me by my dog, Basil, in the early hours of this morning. As some of you know, Basil was in the running for the England manager’s job earlier this century. Last century, Lou Macari got the Swindon job ahead of me although my appication gained a very courteous and knowing reply. Will Crispi?

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/blue-remembered-quills/