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Tuesday November 9, 2010

Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

If you have a poem you'd like to see published in The Irish Examiner then send it to:

The Poetry Corner
The Irish Examiner USA
1040 Jackson Avenue, Third Floor
Long Island City
NY 11101

or, preferably, you can email it direct to
ronniemcginn@eircom.net.

If possible keep your poem to 20 lines. You may choose any subject you like, in any form you like as long as it's original. We look forward to hearing from you.

Everything in the universe is within the range of poetry. Humour, however can sometimes unfairly relegate a writer to the ranks of a lesser poet.

That's because poetry wants to be a little more than a laugh; it wants to leave the reader with something that lasts beyond that initial smile. But humour can be used to deliver serious messages without boring the reader, or it can stand alone on its own merit.

Where this elitist attitude to humorous poetry came from is beyond me, after all Shakespeare was quite an accomplished humorist in his own right.

Our poem this week, which comes from one of our finest poets, illustrates the point.

Terese Coe holds an M.A. in dramatic literature, and first wrote professionally as a drama critic for The Rocky Mountain Review in Salt Lake City, then as a columnist for The Wood River Journal in Idaho. She has taught poetry workshops for advanced English students in Kathmandu, Nepal and for children in Idaho; has written several plays about artists and writers in New York; has worked for periodicals in positions which ranged from paste-up to writer to editor-in-chief.

She has travelled widely and given readings in Nepal as well as at St. Mark's Church and The Cedar Tavern in New York, was a 2000 and 2002 recipient of Giorno Poetry Systems grants and a 2003-4 finalist in the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.

She now lives in downtown Manhattan, where she teaches English composition. Her poems, translations, adaptations and reviews have appeared in publications all over the world.

The Boyfriend

You write haiku and orchestrate cantatas in the den; we hitchhike as you perorate, then hitchhike back again.

Your one-act plays and villanelles
are bleak and unromantic.
Expressionism suits you well,
but living makes you frantic.

Your renaissance won't pay the rent,
we've done the psychodrama,
the bills are not a nonevent,
and I am not your Mama.

My paycheck has been stretched beyond
its means, and when you wave
your fingers like a magic wand,
I want to dig your grave.

© Terese Coe

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