The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within

Comic forms such as the limerick and the clerihew are the pocket cartoons of poetry. Often they fail dismally to provoke the slightest smile–although those collected by Norman Douglas can certainly provoke cries of outrage and s(t)imulated disgust. It seems to me that the City of Poesy, with its associations of delicacy, refined emotion and exquisite literacy is all the richer for having these moral slums within its walls. No metropolis worth visiting is without its red-light district, its cruising areas and a bohemian village where absinthe flows, reefers glow and love is free. W. H. Auden wrote obscene comic verse which you will not find anthologised by Faber and Faber,¹⁴ and even the retiring Robert Frost had the occasional reluctant (and unconvincing) stab at being saucy. Obscenity is a fit manner for comic verse; without it the twin horrors of whimsy and cuteness threaten. There is surely no word in the language that causes the heart to sink like a stone so much as ‘humorous’. Wit is one thing, bawdy another, but humorousness…Humorousness is to wit what a suburban lawn is to either Sissinghurst or a rubbish-heap, what an executive saloon is to an Aston Martin or a cheerful old banger. Wit is either a steel rapier or a lead cosh, rarely a cutely fashioned paper dart. Wit is not nice, wit is not affirmative or consoling. Jonathan Swift describing how ‘A Beautiful Young Nymph Goes to Bed’ is unafraid of being disgusting in his disgust:CORINNA, Pride of Drury-Lane,…Returning at the Midnight Hour;Four Stories climbing to her Bow’r;Then, seated on a three-legg’d Chair,Takes off her artificial Hair:Now, picking out a Crystal Eye,She wipes it clean, and lays it by.Her Eye-Brows from a Mouse’s Hide,Stuck on with Art on either Side,Pulls off with Care, and first displays ’em,Then in a Play-Book smoothly lays ’em.Now dexterously her Plumpers draws,That serve to fill her hollow Jaws.Untwists a Wire; and from her GumsA Set of Teeth completely comes.Pulls out the Rags contriv’d to propHer flabby Dugs and down they drop.Proceeding on, the lovely GoddessUnlaces next her Steel-Rib’d Bodice;Which by the Operator’s Skill,Press down the Lumps, the Hollows fill,Up hoes her Hand, and off she slipsThe Bolsters that supply her Hips.With gentlest Touch, she next exploresHer Shankers, Issues, running Sores,Effects of many a sad Disaster;And then to each applies a Plaster.But must, before she goes to Bed,Rub off the Daubs of White and Red;And smooth the Furrows in her Front,With greasy Paper stuck upon’t.She takes a Bolus e’er she sleeps;And then between two Blankets creeps.…CORINNA wakes. A dreadful Sight!Behold the Ruins of the Night!A wicked Rat her Plaster stole,Half eat, and dragged it to his Hole.The Crystal Eye, alas, was miss’d;And Puss had on her Plumpers piss’d.A Pigeon pick’d her Issue-Peas;And Shock her Tresses fill’d with Fleas.The Nymph, tho’ in this mangled Plight,Must ev’ry Morn her Limbs unite.But how shall I describe her ArtsTo recollect the scatter’d Parts?Or show the Anguish, Toil, and Pain,Of gath’ring up herself again?The bashful Muse will never bearIn such a Scene to interfere.Corinna in the Morning dizen’d,Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d.

Heroic verse indeed. Even more scabrous, scatological and downright disgraceful was the seventeenth-century’s one-man Derek & Clive, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:She was so exquisite a whoreThat in the belly of her motherShe turned her cunt so right beforeHer father fucked them both together.

Mm, nice.

Light Verse

It is revealing that in polls to find the most popular poets, names like Shel Silverstein, Wendy Cope, Spike Milligan, Roald Dahl, Roger McGough, Benjamin Zephaniah, John Betjeman, Glyn Maxwell and Langston Hughes consistently appear high in the charts (not that all their work is comic, of course). Certainly Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda feature too (not that all their work is serious, of course). There seems to be an inexhaustible appetite for verse whose major rhetorical instrument is wit or lightness of touch. It is notable also that long poems seem a great deal less appealing to the public. Perhaps this is something to do with our culture of immediacy: fast food verse for fast food people. Whatever the reason, it seems to me self-evident that if you wish your poetry to make a noise outside the world of academia, poetry magazines and private Gesellschaften, your chances are greatly increased by their possession of an element of esprit. Perhaps the description that best fits the work of the more popular poets is not comic, but light. ‘Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly,’ said Chesterton.