April 28
As this thread comes down to the wire, I still have a short list of poetic forms which haven’t yet made an appearance in “30/30.” I’ll save the list and attempt to explore them at a later date in the “anti-poetry” thread. Today I’m returning to the type of verse which Robert Frost likened to “playing tennis without a net,” although yours fooly has never been able to wield a tennis racket, with or without one. Writing competent netless verse, however isn’t exactly a matter of phoning it. In a way it’s just as difficult to execute as using an established form, because the writer has to come up with a unique structure for that particular piece.
Perhaps that’s the reason there have been relatively few, truly “netless” poems in this thread, namely April 3, April 5, and April 10. On April 12, the net was hiding way up in Iceland. But back here today is another piece of netless verse, also known as “free,” with absolutely no cost to you.
The source of this next number is an online ad consisteing of just a single line asking the Freudian question, “What do rabbits want?”
What Do Rabbits Want?
We want a comfortable patch
of turf that’s nettle-and-burdock free
where we can lie on our furry backs
and lounge for hours at a stretch.
We want that show-off hawk,
cruising above us in the threatening sky,
to spin his fancy spirals somewhere else.
And we want that sneaky fox,
that foul-smelling coyote, and that
vicious pit bull down on Elm Street
to leave us the hell alone.
We want our digs
to stay dry. Now
and then we don’t mind
a freshening shower,
but you can’t imagine
how depressed an otherwise
well-adjusted young rabbit
can get when a suburban
septic tank overflows.
On a balmy moonlit evening
we want to come our and arrange
ourselves in a leporine ring
and hop the night away,
but most of all we want
to pitch a bit of woo, make
a lot of whoopie, and produce
more
and more
and more
rabbits.
PS-- A similar subject had been masterfully treated by a "real" poet, Philip Larkin, whose name has been "haunting" the LitNet in recent days. The title of that poem is ""Myxomatosis."
PPS I've been having a devil of a time connecting to the Web this day. Just my luck!-- with just two more of these things to go. I will try to log back on when the April 29 thingie is ready for posting, but if it should be noticeably absent tomorrow, I will try to finish up this thing on Monday if the connection problems cure themselves. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for all of your support this month.
Auntie