Tag Archives: comic verse

Semi-formal: ‘My Doctir’s Excus’ by Michael R. Burch, age 8

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I can eggsplain why Im sick.
Sick as a brick
and my stule is thick.
I came to school
and I caught it from Rick.
Now I’m sick as a brick
and my stule is thick.
I cant do my homework
becus Im sick.
I cant take tests
becus Im a mess.
Blame Rick, the prick!
—signed, my doctir

PS, Thurd grade is hard enuff on kids nervs and bad graids make my simptoms worse! Liten up, doctirs orders!

*****

Michael R. Burch confesses: “I must admit that the whole thing is entirely fictional, and I lied about my age. Poet license! I came up with the poem this morning (December 17, 2024) as soon as I awoke. That happens to me quite bit: having a line in my head as soon as I wake up. I have even composed poems in my sleep a few times. The original poem had normal spelling, but then it occurred to me to turn it into a not-so-artful ‘doctir’s excuse.’
There was no Rick.”

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts.

Illustration: WikiHow: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Up-a-Good-Excuse-for-Your-Homework-Not-Being-Finished#/Image:Make-Up-a-Good-Excuse-for-Your-Homework-Not-Being-Finished-Step-18.jpg

Review: Max Gutmann, ‘Light and Comic Verse’

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Quirkily-workily
Jorge Bergolio,
On a career path with
Quite a steep slope,

Unostentatiously
Worked as a janitor,
Then as a bouncer, and
Then as the Pope.

This elegant double dactyl on the life of Pope Francis is representative of ‘The Hearthside Treasury of Light and Comic Verse’: interesting, witty, technically perfect. The poems include limericks, clerihews, varieties of ballades, and are purported to be written by a variety of poets, several of whom are claimed to be the first-ever winner of the prestigious Blackfrier Prize for Poetry. The book’s veneer of being ‘edited by Max Gutmann’ is worn even thinner with the bio of his least likely poet, Ed Winters… “A devotee of Hemingway, Hart Crane and Sylvia Plath, Winters shot himself in the mouth while diving from a ship with his head in an oven.”

The book includes two pages of riddles in rhyme, of enjoyable difficulty: half were guessable for me, half not. There is also a full-length Poe parody (‘Quoth the Parrot: “Cracker. Now!”); scenes from The Merchant of Venice, King Lear and Titus Andronicus rewritten by W.S. Gilbert; outrage at the Trump presidency, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and the US Supreme Court’s appalling excuse for subverting the 2000 Presidential election; a poem appropriately written in the form of a dozen eggs; and various puns, off-colour jokes and random surprises. Many of the poems have previously appeared in Light poetry magazine, many others in a range from Asses of Parnassus to the Washington Post.

As for “The Hearthside Treasury” part of the book’s title… though there was (or is) a Hearthside Press, active from the mid-1950s to mid-70s; and an unrelated Hearthside Books, active from the mid-70s to the present, sort of; this “Hearthside Treasury” appears unconnected to anything. Indeed, it’s not even available on Amazon. It doesn’t have an ISBN. All this is a pity, as it is as enjoyable a book of light and comic verse as you can find anywhere. If you want a copy – and if you enjoy comic verse you really ought to have one – you’re going to have to contact the author directly through his website (which mostly focuses on his plays) at maxgutmann.com