Books

[heslopian]

I am bored of great novels.
Virginia Woolf with her myriad leaves,
browning, dying as the ladies do lunch.
Charles Dickens and his broad grotesques
pouting like pantomime dames,
sentences longer than a fisherman's yarn,
signifying nothing. Of the Brontes only Emily
was worth the paper she defaced,
and I still haven't finished Wuthering Heights.
Henry James is tedium defined
and given its own plaque.

I want to read. I want to sit and read
and be taken by a book. Something with -
dare I say it? - soul. Passion, grit, life
and death. Raskolnikov cleaving
the pawnbroker's head, Ahab stabbing
from hell's heart, Bukowski drowning
in whiskey and whores, Larkin laughing
at family men, Highsmith mocking
everyone.

[billy]

wow jack. i really like it the way you merge one author into another is excellent.
should there be a comma after brontes. i quiet happy the poems here because i'd struggle to give it
constructive feedback as such.

some may think the content trite, (everyone and their dad have written of poets, or authors, or artists etc) but here you do it well and without cliché

Charles Dickens and his broad grotesques
pouting like pantomime dames, was my fave lines as they depict a lot of what his characters were about.

thanks for the read.

[heslopian]

Thanks for the kind words Bilbo Glad you liked the Dickens line. His characters were so obviously evil or so obviously good that they really were like pantomime dames. How he's earned the esteem he has is beyond me.

[billy]

i think it's because he creates a certain depth in such characters, right down to bullseye

[heslopian]

Then it's a depth I can't recognise. To me they're just caricatures. Sitcom harridans and evil dwarfs.

[billy]

don't get me wrong, i'm not keen on them but i do see a certain quality in how they're written about.

[heslopian]

Yeah. Henry James is an excellent prose stylist I must admit. He just doesn't mean anything to me.

[addy]

This is terrific Jack... you have found your feet as a writer, and you show that off with much flair in this piece. You do deliver the sharpest barbs

[heslopian]

Thanks Addy Glad I could sock it to 'em!