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I was thinking of MacFlecknoe actually. It's too funny to be fully malicious. The impression is of imaginative gusto, rather than spitting asperity. On 8 Mar 2018 12:21 pm, "Jamie McKendrick" < [log in to unmask]> wrote: > Mac Flecknoe? > Mature in dullness from his tender years, > Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he > Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. > The rest to some dull meaning make pretence, > But Shadwell never deviates into sense... > > It can’t have been a happy moment, either, to be on the receiving end of > one of Catullus’s devastatingly funny attacks. Which included Caesar. > As with Shelley’s denunciatory poem about George III, or another > against Castlereagh. > > These days, though, poets tend to reserve their cruelty for prose. Not > being skilled or witty enough to do so in verse...? The death of Satire as > a form? > (i remember the first student lecture I attended by the great Scottish > Dryden scholar, Reverend James Kinsley, explaining that the term originally > meant a ‘hotchpotch’. He left us to work out how it had metamorphosed into > an C18th genre.) > > Luke’s first point is still worth considering - that ‘it tends to reflect > badly on people’. I think if these attacks are directed against someone > holding power or who has the power to reply in kind they don’t look as bad. > When directed against a group of people who are disempowered they come over > as cowardly and vile. > Jamie > > > > > Sent from my iPad > > On 8 Mar 2018, at 09:08, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Byron, probably. Pope, maybe, Dryden, possibly not. Fortunately > avant-garde poets are excepted from this charge as their intended targets > can't understand the insult. > > (That is a joke, ok ??) > > On 8 March 2018 at 01:54, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> > "poets are sensitive" >> >> Verbal sadism, if not aggression, tends to reflect badly on people, I >> think. I wonder which poets find an intrinsic value in hurting others with >> their words? >> >> Luke >> >> On 27 February 2018 at 21:16, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> >>> > newsflash "poets are sensitive" >>> >>> How can I be sure, of that? Are poets sensitive? >>> >>> Luke >>> >>> On 12 February 2018 at 18:24, Rhys Trimble <[log in to unmask]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> nothing to do with political correctness just a few of us feel that >>>> luke was symptomatic of a POSITIVE CHANGE which is evident in the list's >>>> recent liveliness and to criticize was a little bad form as in general his >>>> influence has been very good and remember that was the second comment aimed >>>> at him by you >>>> >>>> newsflash "poets are sensitive" >>>> >>> >>> >> >