ADVICE FOR ASPIRING POETS.

Tower Citation keyboard

Transcribed below. The typewriter is a 1963 Tower Citation 88 (made for Sears by Smith-Corona) with a ribbon that is perhaps a little too fresh.

Advice for Aspiring Poets.

To make a poem happen, start with rhyme.
The other elements will come in time.
Ignore the critics who would make a crime
Of rhyme; their fussy rants aren’t worth a dime.
Now use the thoughts that come from rhyme to prime
Your poem pump, and watch the verses climb
Away from all the mundane slop and grime
And up into the realm of the sublime!

Or maybe not.
But still, be plucky.
Give it a shot.
You might get lucky.

Comments

  1. Further Questionable Advice to Poets says:

    Is your versifying vapid as a Kardashian?
    – Then make your lines more Ogden Nashian!
    Some say his couplets are questionible
    Others say they’re simply terribibble
    But I say his poems are sublime
    Even if you sometimes end up gasping and out of breath after reading a single solitary rhyme.
    And before you know it he is ending a line with orange—
    And surely nothing rhymes with orange, so the poem will sound like a creaky door-hinge.
    But then you realize, by gum, he did it again,
    And wonder why the pope has not excommunicated him,
    However, when you ponderate the question further,
    Anyone who can rhyme “Hypochondriacs” with “Adirondriacs” can get away with murther
    Indeed, our laureate’s sole flaw –
    Was to die from lactobacillus infection transmitted by improperly prepared coleslaw.
    Therefore – poet, heed this humble plea:
    Look to Ogden, but from coleslaw, flee.

  2. Richard A says:

    Haiku is not for
    Everyone but I think
    You can do it.

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