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My favorite living poet is Wendy Cope, an Englishwoman. I discovered her work on the sales rack at Heffer's in Cambridge. Two for one for copies of Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis:
Cope's most famous poem is a response to an Engineers' Council ad reading "Why isn't there an Engineers' Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we've always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint ... How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?"
She begins:
Cope also rewrote The Waste Land as a series of limericks. Admittedly this wasn't quite as clever as Robert Conquest's rewriting of the Seven Ages of Man speech as a single limerick, but it was definitely up there.
This one is for my B:
Being Boring
If you ask me "What’s new?", I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it’s better today.
I’m content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.
There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion--I’ve used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.
I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don’t need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,
I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.
It was a dream I had last weekOnline copies of some of her work are here and here; I do not guarantee the accuracy of the transcriptions.
And some kind of record seemed vital
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I loved the title.
Cope's most famous poem is a response to an Engineers' Council ad reading "Why isn't there an Engineers' Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we've always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint ... How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?"
She begins:
We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints --and, while a little unfairly (who goes into engineering to be rich?), rips their self-pity apart.
That's why so many poets end up rich.
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?
Cope also rewrote The Waste Land as a series of limericks. Admittedly this wasn't quite as clever as Robert Conquest's rewriting of the Seven Ages of Man speech as a single limerick, but it was definitely up there.
This one is for my B:
Being Boring
If you ask me "What’s new?", I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it’s better today.
I’m content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.
There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion--I’ve used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.
I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don’t need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,
I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.
