I’m planning a technical how-to about writing lyrics so I’ve been doing some background research. During meals I’ve been swotting up on my villanelles and my anadiplosis and my recurrence from a copy of Jeffrey Wainwright‘s Poetry: The Basics that I picked up at the library. It’s informative and an excellent read.

At the start of one of the chapters he quotes Private Eye magazine’s spoof teenage poet E. J. Thribb’s Lines On The Return To Britain Of Billy Graham:

My view is
Far too complicated
To explain in a
Poem.

That’s not just funny; it’s rather good.

And I’d never seen it before, but George is almost certainly familiar with Edwin Morgan‘s Siesta Of A Hungarian Snake:

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z