I believe (i.e. this is not a statement I can back up with scientific data) that it used to be quite common to give and receive original poems as gifts – the poems were not given in lieu of a gift, you understand – they were the gift. And speaking as someone who occasionally writes (comic) poems to be given as gifts, let me assure you that these gifts are always both expensive to buy (i.e. write) and highly valued by their recipients.
What do I mean by expensive? Well, they consume hours of time, and thousands (millions?) of kilojoules (gigawats?) of mental energy. At least, they do if, like me, you want your occasional comic poems to have action as well as description. If you want action you need a plot; if you want a satisfying plot you need a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end – not to mention at least one character that develops – and you have to cram all those things into approximately 120-150 lines. You have to be funny, too, but obvious rhyming automatically adds a pinch of humour, so trust me when I say that fitting a well-shaped plot into no more than 150 lines is the difficult part.
The poet I always have in mind when I write a comic poem to be given as a gift is Alexander Pope. Pope knew the great European epics inside out and back to front – the famous lines and ideas from these epics were constantly bouncing around inside his head. In his most famous work, The Rape of the Lock, he generated a great deal of humour (if you’re studying the book for GCSE English feel free to disagree) by describing the mundane social activities of a group of his contemporaries in a heroic, or epic, style. The (real) people he described both were and weren’t characters in an epic poem – meaning that Pope was able to ridicule and flatter them at the same time. He used his knowledge of epic poetry to much more savage effect in The Dunciad, but that’s a subject for another time.
Recently I wrote a poem to present to a couple of friends who had just married and, of course, the impulse to mock epic was irresistible. In the following (slightly anonymised) extract, Tarryn, the heroine of the poem, has a vision in which she sees her intended, Stephen, go into battle for the health of the planet. Why? Because he works in the ‘Cleantech’ industry. Yes, it’s tenuous – that’s okay too! I either did a reasonable job of parodying Spenser or stole shamelessly and unoriginally from Cervantes – YOU DECIDE:
Next Tarryn was shown her Stephen at work –
Here was no simple, paper-pushing clerk
(The heavens used metaphor, as was their right
To show sceptical Tarryn the light).
So Stephen was garbed like a Knight of old,
‘The C——– G—-’ brand, emblazoned in gold
He bore on his breastplate. His shining shield
Was a solar panel only he could wield;
His mace-like weapon was a wind-turbine,
Sharp-edged and menacing in its out-line,
And his steed was a gigantic Prius,
When he rode into battle to free-us
From our tragic dependence on fossil fuels.Upon the horizon three giants appeared,
For battle these hulks were booted and geared,
They moved in a sun and lung-killing haze,
Shooting flames that set the green fields ablaze,
And they left behind a river of oil,
That choked the air and soaked the rich soil.
Needless to say these three demons from hell,
Were sent by BP, Texaco, and Shell.
Steve charged at them in his electric car,
Blinding their eyes with his shield from afar,
He soon drew near them and battle commenced,
Though none could withstand the knocks he dispensed,
One by one they found themselves floored,
Tasting the steel of his wind turbine sword;
The combat was brutal, the combat was quick
Each giant lay still in its own oil slick,
And Stephen stood on a pile of his foes,
Striking a bold and a heroic pose,
As the stark vision of this epic fight,
Faded fast from our heroine’s blank sight.
CM.
