Calling All Stations

Enjambment – it’s a nasty little habit
That’s likely to derail the locomotion of your meter –
For lines that run-away are sure to rabbit,
So prose may ride expresses, but the slow train sounds the sweeter.

Yet another poem about poetry, but at least it’s short.  I’ve always been puzzled by where modern poets choose to break their lines, particularly as when they read it out, there’s often no pause whatsoever between the lines.  The verb ‘to rabbit’ is used here in its cockney sense meaning to chatter – nothing to do with running, except the mouth.

Poetic Truth

        1.
You are so wrong, so very very wrong,
To think that rhymes wreck the verse.
Sure, they get used where they don’t belong,
And when ill-used are a curse.
And yes, they take their time to mature
In the life of the poet’s pen –
They cannot be nervous, must always be sure,
And practiced agen and agen.

        2.
They write their verses blank and free,
And barely bait the hook –
But Keats and Frost and Tennyson
Can still be grasped by anyone.
They write their verses free and blank,
And barely sell a book –
While Blake and Burns and Betjamin
Can still sell-out and fetch ’em in.

        3.
I tell myself, its cos they rhyme –
They hate me that, they hate me that.
I know my verse is in its prime –
They must see that, they must see that.
But still I always get rejected,
While some prosy tripe’s selected.
Must be just how I suspected –
Must be that, it must be that.