Well, I myself
Would hate an elf!
Imagine being wed
To such a fellow
Who'd be but "mellow"
Long after one is dead!
A contest entry
- Adult Ladies only by Riftkin.
780 points, ended August 8, 2008, 6 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
PLEASE DO NOT FEEL OBLIGED TO COMMENT - but if you do comment, please understand that it may be some time before I can respond
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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Brillo pads!
Thank you for the giggle
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Thank you for picking that which suits you.
and writing for my contest.
Riftkin
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It would be kind of wierd. Inevitably, you would be making all kinds of plans that didn't include him.
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How would a poet ever get to the point of ever being able to write such crisp clean professional poetry? I do not have a clue. But the reason I never really called myself a poet and do not think of myself as a poet is because I can not write poetry like this. It is not the style- because I am certain no matter what style you used it would be as good as this. What that 'particular thing I am thinking of' is though- I have no idea!
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Thank you for your appreciation. The answer to your question is, I would say, a simple one: Practice, practice, practice. The true gift of poetry - what Aristotle called metaphor - the perception of underlying identities in the seemingly diverse - IS a gift, and CANNOT be taught, but almost everything else connected with poetry CAN be learned and practised. (I say ALMOST everything else - since I have encountered one person in ALLpoetry who maintains she cannot perceive rhythm at all - not surprisingly she confines herself to haiku and other syllable-count forms!)
But, of course, practice takes time. I was lucky... my parents and gransparents shared a house, and my grandmother taught me to make rhymes as soon as I began to talk. Then when I was seven, my class-teacher at school (a retired journalist who had volunteered for teaching during WWII to release someone younger for the armed forces)said that whatever I wanted to do, I should also train as a freelance writer "so as always to have something safe to fall back on!". What else? Well, a background in mathematics taught me precision, crippling asthma which struck when I was in my late teens and which for almost a decade (until effective drugs were developed) meant spending weeks at a time in bed, with no other means of supporting myself except writing... freelance work in patent abstracting, followed by decades years of journalism taught me to pare words down to the necessary minumum, and translating poetry (my parallel source of livelihood) has for more than 50 years given me practice in rendering and replicating as accurately as possible both the content and music of the original. So, in short, I started young... and was obliged to keep practising.... So, now that I am 72 years old, it is perhaps not surprising that I can turn verses quite neatly... But as for that other ingredient... that indescribable SOMETHING that elevates verse to the level of true poetry - well, if my work has that, it is no merit of mine...That comes from somewhere and Someone/Something outside myself - call it what you will - Muse or Shekinah or Holy Ghost or Odinn's Ale, or the Platonic Ideal... when all is said and done, all the practice in the world can only help us prepare the vehicle through which He/She/It can speak - IF (but ONLY if) He/She/It so wills.
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A proper elf
Would weave a charm
To save his human wife from harm
He'd do the weaving by himself
Hard for a man, but not for elf
And when he'd fastened up his spell
Just to ensure that all went well
He'd give you then eternal youth
I know that this is simple troof
If thoughts of this make one feel nervous
Contact the National Elf Service
Yes, these elves are really only out for themselves. Take care. K. -
I had a wee chuckle to this.
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A small man, small in stature
isn’t always a small man.
The size of a man is
determined by what he
believes about himself
and what he believes about
those around him.
What is an Elf?
Do they live longer that humans?
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