Thursday, September 13, 2007

Grim By Default

Grim By Default

These artificial means
Are easily as bad
As artificial pleasants
Though they fool more thoroughly
The face reflecting my facade.
To play at being angry
Serious business, that.
To gather those reflections
I must be mad.
When all but sometimes
I can portray glad or contented
Mock expressions

JM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In his book World Within World (London, 1951) Stephen Spender tells about meeting Auden when they were both students at Oxford.

"At our first meeting he asked me how often I wrote poetry. Without reflecting, i replied that I wrote about four poems a day. He was astonished and exclaimed:'What energy!' I asked him how often he wrote a poem. He replied: 'I write about one in three weeks.' After this I started writing only one poem in three weeks."

--sm

chopready said...

I belive in the volume method. I write daily but might only have a good one now and then. Mostly then.
Thanks for the comment!