Blount's Literati Poems

I believe that Roy Blount Jr. is the worthy successor of Ogden Nash and here are some evidence:

LIT DEMYSTIFIED QUICKLY

Dean Jonathan Swift
Seemed constantly miffed.
He never found it futile
To badger men for being brutal.
Savage indignation tore his breast.
He never cracked a smile, except in jest.




Blake’s father was a hosier.
So’s yer
Old man. At least, suppose yer
Father were a hosier. Dealt in hose.
Just suppose.
Would it make you be a poet?
I don’t know – it
Might be one of those formative shocks,
To learn your father dealt in socks.





If Nineteenth-Century U.S. Lit
Has few embraceable men in it,
It’s not the fault
Of Whitman, Walt.



“The Dead” by Joyce, which John
Huston based a movie on,
Answers gravely what
A woman wants: not what she’s got,
But someone worthier
Who died in youth for want of her.






Summoned by someone from Mississippi,
The Poetry Muse’s response was snippy:
“Dear Mr. William Faulkner,
I go for neither highflown talk nor
Dialect nor melodrama.
Yours very sincerely, comma,
The Muse of Poetry. P.S.
Who gave you my address?”

The Novel Muse leapt at this offer;

Which is why we have Yoknapatawpha.






“Swansea girls!” said Swansea mamas,
“Stay away from Dylan Thomas.
“Green raging am I
In the death of God’s thigh”
Is his idea of showing promise.”





Edna St. Vincent Millay
Had more than a little to say
But less than a lot.
And as for F. Scott
Fitzgerald, he died in L.A.