How the Watley Review came to be. Sort of.

Volume 7, Issue 1, February 3, 2009

Vice Verse-a

It came to me, there while I ate
My breakfast, sitting at the table late
That poetry would be my task
For this week's essay: so, to ask
My muse for some inspired verse
Instead of usual prose.

"But poetry's a dying art,"
My nephew says - "Don't play the part
Of literary dinosaur.
Who reads this stuff? They don't want more
Of rhymes and words inscrutable.
Just ramble normally."

But such a rich toolbox I find
For language (the poetic kind):
Iambs! Trochees! Anapests!
Which of these will serve me best?
A dash of tetrametric flair
Might serve my purpose well.

"These tools are vain, constraining tricks
Which people see like verbal bricks,
Laid out in patterns quite antique,"
Scoffs Ephram; "Verse is rather weak
Today, it just obscures
Intent - a lipstick'd pig.

Verse today is freer far -
Like Jackson Pollock with a jar
Of verbs and adjectives, to drip
On paper, a creative trip
A journey neither here nor there
Hints of intuition."

My nephew, he does have a point:
Hexameters show every joint
Distracting from the task at hand,
To share insight across the land
Of some creative sort, a gift
To readers far and wide.

But I'm no Maya Angelou
Caged birds sing not for me and you.
With Updike gone, that man of letters
Most certainly my writing better,
What chance have I to fill his shoes?
(And are they a size ten?)

Yet even prose falls far behind
As writing of a bloggish kind
Seeps through each and every page
Brief and flat, neither spicy nor sage
Served quickly in those hasty posts
A most impov'rished meal.

But poetry is for the self
As much as getting on the shelf
With titled tome; so I persist
In penning verses with a twist
Or rambling spondees in a row -
Whatever suits my mood.

I do not know what sort of verse
I'll conjure, or if, even worse,
What sort of rambling I'll produce
With language playing fast and loose:
It does not matter, for you see
My audience, o'er all, is me.

And I'm a forgiving sort.

- Ezekiel F. Watley, Esq.