The poems I like best integrate the dark and the light sides of experience. 
Of course this is not a new thing. Consider Keats's Nightingale. Then you 
can get the two positions in adjacent poems (eg Milton's Allegero and 
Pensero).

I would like to think that the fashion for gritty realism has past it's 
peak. At any rate I don't rant against it as much as I did. Here's a poem I 
wrote in 1994. It's not for c and c. It's just a rant and if I let off some 
steam in the process, that was enough.

Hope this is relevant.

Colin


3.4.94    Gratuitous squalour





(Starting with prophylactics that should have been used earlier)



Do you think that I don't notice them,

The discarded condoms wriggling with summer maggots

That gobble the gonorrhea pus,

The cigarette butts stuffed into phlegmy spittle,

The drug addict with mazy mind

Who slips and falls on what

A passing dog has left behind?



Someone else may want to write about them

And sound grandiloquent;

But I don't;

So let them get on with it.

Degustibus non es disputandum.

Matters of taste can't be disputed.



The housing estates strafed

By Kalashnikov assault rifle fire

And other testimony of human life

I shall leave for someone else to write for you.

These things may be more pressing

Than the things I know

Though not more true.





_______________________________________________________




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gill McEvoy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: discussion topic: series of poems- to Giull, sorry!


> Dear Sally, it is about Clinton, yes, his affair with Monica. But it is 
> very well done: the 2 of them found some marvellous flower names: Monarda 
> Didyma for Monica for example, and it is very witty. No longer so topical 
> of course...I know politics are best avoided, but wit is a really special 
> thing. Wit doesn't seem very popular any more. I open so many poetry mags 
> and there are a thousand poems about cancer, death, dementia, old 
> age....Goodness knows I've been through one of that list and written about 
> it too. But now I crave colour, joy, delight in the world around us - it's 
> not a bad old place and we're hardly here for very long....
> best wishes,
> sincerely,
> Gill
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "sally evans" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 6:12 PM
> Subject: Re: discussion topic: series of poems- to Giull, sorry!
>
>
>> Gill. get them to try me. I thought it was Gerald writing that at first
>> cheers
>> SallyE
>>
>> on 21/2/06 1:44 pm, Gerald England at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>
>>> --- Gill McEvoy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> And also why is it hard for a jointly penned poem to
>>>> get published? I ran a
>>>> workshop based on Elma Mitchell's poem "Lifecycle of
>>>> the Moth" in which the
>>>> poet uses only the common names of the moths to tell
>>>> a story. We used the
>>>> names of flowers and birds to make a story-poem and
>>>> 2 people (we worked in
>>>> pairs as I only had a few flower books/ bird books)
>>>> produced a stunning poem
>>>> called "Clinton's Lily" which they can't seem to get
>>>> published under 2
>>>> names. Any advice?
>>>> best wishes to everyone,
>>>> Gill
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> No virus found in this incoming message.
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>> 17/02/2006
>>
>>
>