THE SEVEN GOLDEN RULES! (weekly poem)

THE SEVEN GOLDEN RULES!

Advice to budding revolutionary poets on how to

write a modern poetic masterpiece for the arty,

cut-throat world of bourgeois poetry publishing!

Rule Number One’s obligatory--

It’s never, ever,  write in rhyme;

Because in modern poetry,

That is the most outrageous crime!

Rule Number Two - advisedly,

Is never let your poem scan;

Make it irregular and free,

Or else you’ll be an ‘also-ran’.

Rule Number Three - write in forced prose,

Pretentious lines of  little sense;  

As in the ‘Emperors New Clothes’, (1)

Who wants to be thought of as dense?

Rule Number Four is be obscure,

So one will be upon firm ground;

The literati will ensure,

One’s work is lauded as profound!

Rule Number Five – add the odd note, (2)

On the sly pretext they’ll explain;

The muddled nonsense that’s remote,

Inside the author’s fuddled brain.

Rule Number Six - assimilate!

Post-Modernistic double-speak;

So on ‘Imagine’ one can prate, (3)

Ad nauseam with the ‘in’ clique.

Rule Number Seven - play the part!

Eccentric, bearded (4) and half-drunk;

Act arty-farty for your art,

Or they’ll dismiss one’s oeuvre as junk.

So poetasters now you know,

The key to fortune and to fame;

Your work may be completely faux,

But you’ll gain scholarly acclaim!

(1) Hans Christian Anderson’s story of a king who was

conned into believing his clothes were only visible to

clever people - until a young child spilled the beans.

(2) As here.

(3) ‘Imagine’ - BBC TV Arts Programme.

(4) Optional for women poets.

© Richard Layton