My poetry archive: Folly

The short-lived ezine Folly specialized in parody and satire. I daresay old hands know the identity of "C. Sharpe," the editor; I do not. Parody lovers will be grateful to Rose Kelleher for preserving it on her "Rambling Rose" site. The five issues boast contributions from a number of masters of light verse, and provide a wonderful diversion; they also bear the stamp of the Bush years.

(For those who write metrical poetry, Rose also maintains an annotated list of Venues for Formal Poetry on her site, listing print and web magazines that are either exclusively devoted to, or noticeably friendly toward, poetry written in forms.)

Back to Folly: The final issue, for October 2006, included two of parodies of mine which I believe marked my online debut in a literary zine. Both have backstories.

Little plastic hangers from new pairs of socks is the third in a series of poems on that subject. The first was a collage of quotations from various prose and poetic sources; the title is the first line, from one of Don Aslett's decluttering books. The result was startlingly apocalyptic, so much so that I challenged myself to do another collage in a more meditative vein. After that, I decided that I should really generate a poem using my own words. The poem in Folly is the result.

(Little plastic hangers #1 is in the current issue of Pemmican. It won't be archived, so read it while you can. If I find a publisher for #2 I'll post the whole series.)

My last duke was the culmination of a game played on poets.org. The participants took turns suggesting an object for each player to write a poem about. When we got up to 25 objects, we challenged ourselves to write poems using all 25. This is mine.