The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords
F E Smith, Lord Birkenhead
I thought I’d quote Smith for the title, but make it plain I had done so. I didn’t want you to think I’d just nicked the title off the telly, though this is probably unlikely as I just looked it up and find it aired in 1976. hardly a current reference.
I needed a title with “prize” in it as I just won a poetry prize. It’s a poem of the issue award from Eucalypt, a tanka magazine. Every issue, they have two, chosen by the winners of the previous issue’s awards. I now have a commentary on my work and my subscription has been extended by an issue. More worryingly for a man with a very lacklustre education, I have select a winner from the next issue and supply a commentary for it. The one supplied for mine was insightful. The one supplied for the other winner was decidedly erudite. The one about mine used the word trochee. It’s something like 53 years since I last used the word trochee. I’m pretty sure I only used it once then.
As I grow in confidence as a poet I no longer worry about imposter syndrome and am sure I will mange to write an acceptable commentary. I can blog, I can write poetry and I can write about coins, how difficult can it be? I’ll need a few quotes to fill up the space but as long as I get down to it promptly I should be OK.
In the meantime, I should get on with my medallion presentation and making lunch ready for Julia’s return. The poem was a about the stripy shed on the MENCAP Gardens – that’s the pictures today.
I now, of course, regret not taking a photo of the whole shed instead of being arty.
You’ll just hafta go back and take the while shed now that you have ‘piqued’ our interest.
The school where the project land was situated made access so difficult it may not actually be possible these days.
A triumph. Congratulations.
I hope that you get the opportunity to use iamb and anapaest in your review.
It’s all coming back to me now, the horror of what (apart from me) is stressed and what isn’t . . .
Scansion, prosody and all that stuff lead inevitably to the door marked “Latin” and some of the darkest days of my early life.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
Ugh!
Congrats! I look forward to hearing about how you deal with commentary and what word you can dig out…personally I’m trying to bring back the words hijinks and cahoots, but I don’t think they’ll work for you in this particular endeavor
Good luck in your efforts with the hijinks and cahoots. They are fine words and we would be better in a world where they are widely used in place of many of the modern words we have.
However, you are unfortunately correct about their use in my current situation. 🙁
Congrats, congrats! An education is a fine thing. A good mind is even finer.
I’m sure I used to have one when I was younger, I just need to remember what I did with it . . .
Congratulations. Especially on using the word trochee which I have never done
Twice in 50 years. I’m hardly a leading exponent of using the word. 🙂
It sounds like all is going well with your writing! However you may view your own education, you have done well.
I’m quietly happy, though apprehensive about my move to poetry reviewing. 🙂
You will do well.
I will be adequate, but I will dress it up in big words. 🙂