Epigrams, no one much writes epigrams in that ever so slightly stiff, schoolmaster undoing his top button J.V. Cunningham way anymore, do they?
Here's one from a new pamphlet called Eight by Five by Dante and Laforgue translator and former Agenda co-editor Peter Dale. It's called 'Dr Foster', and can I presume be hummed to the tune of 'I bargained for salvation and she gave me a lethal dose':
With his discovery of the happy pill
good Dr Foster's cured the most morose.
They say it's just the thing for every ill,
so I have taken a suicidal dose.
(Eight by Five, Rack Press, The Rack, Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys LD8 2PF, £4)
2 comments:
Yep, I think I prefer the less stiff (though more priapic) variety, such as Gunn's couplet:
BARREN LEAVES
Spontaneous overflows of powerful feeling:
Wet dreams, wet dreams, in libraries congealing.
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