On First Looking Into Willard Espy’s Words to Rhyme With
Much had I floundered as a hapless schmuck
’Midst Mount Parnassus’ bitter windswept clime,
Until I had the providential luck
To crack Will Espy’s epic book on rhyme.
His Words to Rhyme With hit me like a bolt
Of lightning from the upper troposphere,
And changed me from a dilatory dolt
To one forever cured of rhyming fear.
With Espy, I spin webs of clever verses
On nimrods who pursue the shy Melursus
And other beasts, of whom I seldom think;
Such as the creophagous Oxyrhynch.
I sing how engineers, in English tongue,
Expound on car suspensions, underslung;
And then I strike my harp and join the chorus
Of men who mourn the vanished Stegosaurus.
Edwin Arlington Robinson on Charles Bukowski
Charlie Bukowski, just like me,
Pursued a Muse of his own choosing;
The visions both of us would see
Required boozing.
Unlike myself, he lacked serene
Illusions of the Middle Ages;
He penned the current L.A. scene
In drunken rages.
Charlie Bukowski had it made;
Although he never rolled in riches,
He had no trouble getting laid
By tipsy bitches.
At criticism, Charles would laugh,
His attitude a frosty bold one;
He’d twist a cap, and then he’d quaff
Another cold one.
Douglas G. Brown is a New England Yankee, having been born in Belfast, Maine. In fifth grade, his first poem was an irreverent elegy on a local hero, Admiral William Veazie Pratt: “Admiral William Veazie Pratt/Did not expire just like that;/At 87, he went blind,/And then he slowly lost his mind.” His classmates enjoyed it, but the teacher scolded him for “not taking poetry seriously enough.” He has been not taking poetry seriously enough ever since. His work has been published by the Maine Limerick Project, Trinacria, Light, Lighten Up Online, and The Spectator.