Young Abe Lincoln supposedly said, “Any man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read yet is a friend of mine.” I, too, am always grateful to have a writer who might be up my alley brought to my attention.
On a recent tour of Berlin, i was in a group with a couple born in Galway who have now lived for many years in Canada. They put me on to Wendy Cope, an English poetess who writes very witty light verse, such as a version of T.S.Eliot’s “The Wasteland” in five limericks, but can also surprise you with a poem that suddenly takes a heartbreaking turn.
Her early poems often touch on the horror of dating, her later on the experience of growing old together with a partner, the aging of oneself and the loss of old friends and family.
Defining the Problem
I can’t forgive you. Even if I could,
You wouldn’t pardon me for seeing through you.
And yet I cannot cure myself of love
For what I thought you were before I knew you
She can pivot from wry amusement to sorrowful resignation. A poem about finding a picture of her father when he was young, before what she remembers as “all his sadness,” ends with this surprising turn:
“There he is, happy, and I am unborn.”
Several poems that were solicited for an occasion are rejected for not taking the subject with sufficient solemnity, but are probably more memorable and surely more fun than the acceptable ones. Here’s a reject for an anthology put out by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Kindness to Animals
If I went vegetarian
And didn’t eat lamb for dinner,
I think I’d be a better person
And also thinner.
But the lamb is not endangered
And at least I can truthfully say
I have never ever eaten a barn owl,
So perhaps I am OK.
She shares with Emily Dickinson the ability to be gnomic and tart at once. Her poems are often small and homely, though the big world sometimes creeps in, as in an oblique reference to 9-11. And her observations can have a wider significance than she lets on.
For example, one of the interesting characteristics of the American electorate in the age of Trump is a dramatic divergence of opinion about him between male and female voters, especially suburban voters. What explains it? This brief verse by Cope may shed some light on the phenomenon. It is one of a pair called “Differences of Opinion.”
He Tells Her
He tells her that the earth is flat —
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
All of these are from a book of her selected early work, “Two Cures for Love.” Her later poems grow deeper, darker, more seriously funny, but still endearing, and can be found in “Anecdotal Evidence” and “Family Values.” Highly recommended. For literate friends, a charming stocking stuffer.