A rejoinder to the famous poem by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, "The Imperfect Enjoyment." A playful parody in imitation of the Earl's satirical neoclassical prosody.
The Perfect Enjoyment: A Lesson for John Wilmot
Fair Kora,
Let us lay our lines together in a poem.
Let me lay my bilabial plosive
On your sweet rhyme,
And time, and we united,
In strophe and antistrophe,
Shall sing and dance until the climax of our air.
Free verse and metered lines we’ll use,
And undulating rhythms too will fuse
With metaphor, the motive and the music,
And what’s more, like a sword thrusting
Tirelessly, ever true and keen,
In the vast redeeming underbelly of the sea,
Received in constant motion, rising
And falling onward to the shore of ecstasy.
In spume and froth sweet Aphrodite come
Naked on your clam shell, and once again
Repeat the long lost words of love and lease
A moment of your tide to our soft charge,
For when those sounds we've married to our own,
Our poem’s complete, and we, though emptied,
With your rhyme replete.
A well-written poem does not really have to rhyme, as long as the author knows when and where to separate the lines to allow the readers to come to a closure of the line of verse, take a breath and then continue to read the next line of verse. It must allow the stanzas of verse to sink into the reader's mind to form an emotional connection, thus allowing to the reader to feel the poem.
A well-form constructed poem with rhymes but without any connection to the reader's emotion is easily forgotten. The only thing it does is give a smooth reading, and that's about all.
Well, that's just MHO. I'm not a well-versed poet. I just write what's on my mind most of the time.
Mary Angela Nangini's poems celebrate the richness of life and love. From the city to cottage-country and the roads in between, Nangini explores the changing seasons of her varied region. (This book will soon be reprinted in hard cover.)
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Ron
A well-form constructed poem with rhymes but without any connection to the reader's emotion is easily forgotten. The only thing it does is give a smooth reading, and that's about all.
Well, that's just MHO. I'm not a well-versed poet. I just write what's on my mind most of the time.
Sandie