Inspired Poetry

[kb83]

"Who is this Pope I hear so much about? I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will my subjects not write in prose?"
— George II


kb83
June 2, 2024, 9:40 pm
I cannot resist "Pope"-ifying it. Who is this Pope I hear so much about? I find no merit in what others tout. His works repeat what everybody knows, And suffer from a dreadful lack of prose.

And this is yet another example of a King quarreling with a pope.

[LLapp]

"To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe." — Jean-Paul Sartre

kb83
August 18, 2023, 8:57 am
Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre
Confusion he honed to an art.
If you know you believe,
Then you do not believe,
You're confused but you know that you're smart.

[kb83]

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
— Alexander Pope

I added line breaks

kb83
February 21, 2022, 10:35 pm
I will try to pope-ify it:
A man should never be ashamed to own
He has been wrong, for thereby he has shown
Himself a learner who can say today,
That he is wiser now than yesterday.

[318WOZ]

Kb83, I appreciate your unabashed self-promotion. I think it's no problem here.

[kb83]

More unabashed self-promotion. I added line breaks.

"What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?"
— Wystan Hugh Auden

kb83
July 15, 2022, 2:06 pm

A tenured professor of poetry
Sat under a spreading balboa tree
Said she to her class,
As they sat on the grass,
"How lovely it can be to know a tree."

[Eureka]

"Heaven is blessed with perfect rest but the blessing of earth is toil." — Henry Van Dyke

Marboy
March 16, 2017, 12:01 pm
... A kitchen is blessed as home's perfect nest and having an onion to boil.

[kb83]

Nietszche is smiling. Thanks, LLapp!

I don't know if this is permitted, but I think it would be better to reverse lines 3 and 4, i.e.

"...She loved to quote Pascal
And danced like a rascal,
... Now she's tenured and done with that phase."

[Eureka]

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't." — Blaise Pascal

dovid1946
June 2, 2015, 9:03 am
There was once a stripper who called herself 'BLAZE PASCAL'. She was probably some philosophy major who couldn't get a job philosophizing.

kb83
March 14, 2016, 7:29 am
There once was a stripper named Blaze, Her philosophy did all amaze, She danced like a rascal, And loved to quote Pascal,

LLapp
February 6, 2019, 7:32 pm
. . . Now she's tenured and done with that phase.

[kb83]

I wrote a limerick to this, inspired by Llapp’s information about Trotsky. But I thought surely it would appear in this comment thread, but it did not, so here it is (I saved it):

"Under all conditions well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points. " — Leon Trotsky

kb83
April 21, 2014, 9:27 am
who is the "him"?
tskaggs6
September 24, 2014, 11:34 am
I would guess Stalin. They didn't get on all that well you know.
kb83
October 15, 2015, 3:03 am
I verified your guess, tskaggs6. Well done! It was in an unfinished biography of Stalin by Trotsky.
LLapp
January 18, 2017, 3:34 pm
'He never talked about politics. He was a schnorrer! All he cared about was who would pay for his lunch!" - My grandfather, remembering Lev Bronstein during his Lower East Side days
Persephone59
December 12, 2017, 9:26 pm
I understand he was also lovers with Frida Kahlo, and moved in the same circles as she and her husband, Diego Rivera.
LLapp
July 15, 2018, 5:05 pm
He was deeply steeped in the arts. My grandpa knew him as part of his theater-going crowd.
Eureka
November 17, 2022, 6:44 pm
Amazing, LLapp!

There was a young fellow named Trotsky,
A Communist chap, not a Nazi,
"From each who can feed,
To me what I need,
It's y'all who are paying, it's not me"

[kb83]

Here's another self-promotion. I added line breaks.

"Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." — Warren Spahn

kb83
March 6, 2018, 3:57 am
Here's a haiku:

Hitting is timing.
Pitching is breaking timing.
All the rest is spin.

[LLapp]

^ Kb83, if I had written that, I would have a hard time not posting it myself. It’s a delightful rhyme, and, given random quote selection and difficulty level, many of us would never get to read it otherwise.

[kb83]

At the risk of self-promotion. (I added line breaks)

"While Australia is superficially referred to as a continental nation, upon closer scrutiny, it is in fact an archipelago."
— Asher Judah


kb83
August 13, 2023, 4:21 pm

A tourist from old San Diego
Tried renting a big Winnebago,
To see all Australia,
He thought, (inter alia,)
But it was an archipelago.

[LLapp]

Thanks . . . I actually kind of cringed when I saw it. But I do like the second line.

[kb83]

Nice, Llapp! The rhythm reminds me of one of Piet Hein's "grooks."

[hrossa]

This is awesome!