as of today, the US has a new poet laureate, Billy Collins; here is something from his latest book:

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,

and after this one just a dozen

to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,

then only ten more left like rows of beans.

How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan

and insist the iambic bongos must be played

and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,

one for every station of the cross.

But hang on here while we make the turn

into the final six where all will be resolved,

where longing and heartache will find an end,

where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,

take off those crazy medieval tights,

blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

-- Billy Collins

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=294

It's a form with rules. You ain't *sposed to mess with it.
harrumph®

we all march to different bongos, I guess.

(meanwhile, try some of his other efforts at the link -- I particularly like "I go back to the house for a book", a variation on our variations on time theme.)

...a variation on our variations on time theme...tsuwm, what an utterly kewl (hi, Max) idea!
Quite literally "getting ahead of himself". And, and, I like your 'variations on a theme' theme, thoo-I-mean-too.

The important question is:

Do it sing?

I respectfully submit the answer is, "No."

of the story of Annie, Bessie, and Laurie, all of whom were lions in the Boston Zoo. Bored with life, they set out on a walk through Boston Common, where one of them, feeling a might peckish, gobbled up a little old white-haired guy who was sitting on a park bench writing poetry.

Later, they returned to their cage, where they heard on the radio that Robert Frost had disappeared in Bost Common. Annie turned to Bessie and said, "Must've been the poet Laurie ate."

...the poet Laurie ate.
Groan-nn...Ted, I'm so glad you're here, you not-a-legume!

Abiding rules or not, it's a wiser man who listens when ordered from his tights, than he who tarries at his desk to capture ecstacy while s/he falls angrilly to sleep in bed, who called him there.

To say, I think it's charming.

Once again, had you but posted it's a wiser man who listens when ... in Maximising Value I could have added it to the collexion (Brit spelling to match Maximising...).

hey, hew yew akewzing ov maching spellingz?

But at least the language sings this side of the pond!

<<had you but posted

But it didn't belong in animal safari, it was a response, a reflection on the sticky price of rules; it was a smile (true), a winged intending for your beloved--fated sadly to home to roost in a province beyond authorial intent.

All of that and more: it was toad-bit maxim* mishappen and ugly, clumsly--a maxim so out-maxed as to occupy the space of three proverbs with the substance none.

*Disclaimer: as a greeting it was not toad-bit. [care-in-speech emoticon]

Wa-al, I've heard of flea-bit, and I've heard of rarebit, but I ain't never heard o' no toad-bit.

toad bits,
fard bits,
sex bits,
a dullard...

or, what this world needs is a good two-bit computer.

Darn it, tsuwm, puns are MY territory. As soon as I saw the other post the exact same words, or darned close, flashed in my mind, and luckily I saw your post before I made a fuel out of myself.

what this world needs is a good two-bit computer. Nah, we have you...

The last poet laureate I had anything at all to do with was John Masefield. And what I had to do with him was to memorise those boring lines "I must go down to the sea ..." to order in English classes. I have now mercifully forgotten most of them. I took an instant dislike to all poetry bar limericks at that point and have only grudgingly retreated from that position since.

Anyway, to get to my point, who the hey says anyone is a Poet Laureate. And what does it get them? And us?

Just asking ...

it gets him (in this case and in the US) something like a $35,000 stipend for a year and then replacement, but that's from memory and may be a little orff. it also gets him (in this case) a bit of a push for his latest collection.

$35k? bloody Yanks! I think the English version gets 3 silver farthings and the right to drive pigs over Tower Bridge on a Sunday, or some such quaintery

here it is then, mtywtk (more than you wanted to know) about the position of poet laureate in the US> http://www.loc.gov/poetry/laureate.html

may be a little orff.

From tswum's link: The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.

From Billy Collins' list of publications:

Sailing Alone Around the Room
Picnic, Lightning
The Art of Drowning
Questions About Angels
The Apple That Astonished Paris
Video Poems
Pokerface

What he really should be doing is writing scripts for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

What he really should be doing is writing scripts for Monty Python's Flying Circus

Ah-HA! CapK, unmasked at last! Secretly you want to write for the Pythons, right?

The picture of Arthur Huntington shows a striking resemblence to John Cleese.

Say no more!

Ah-HA! CapK, unmasked at last! Secretly you want to write for the Pythons, right?

No, madam, not at all. What I wanted to do was to write scripts for the Goons. "It was a cold, dark night on the Thames Embankment, and there I stood in my thrice-turned paper overcoat with my toes sticking out of my feet ...". Much more subtle, really.

scripts for the Goons. "It was a cold, dark night on the Thames Embankment, and there I stood in my thrice-turned paper overcoat with my toes sticking out of my feet ...". Much more subtle, really.

Ohhh, love it! Is there more? Not familiar with Goons ... is there a link?

http://www.goon.org/

Proceed with caution; not for the faint-hearted.

Also heard on WCLV's Weekend Radio with some irregular regularity. http://www.wclv.com/seaway_listings_weekend.jsp

Holy cow! What an udderly mammilian monument! My shoulders hurt just looking at her. [that's no sour grapes-e]

Nope, and no monument to silicon science was she!

Wow, the Goons are an acquired taste. You can acquire it in the first instance by getting hold of a CD with a couple of shows on it from the Beeb, I believe.

And there stood a fool, wearing a mini coalsack and both feet in one gumboot.

Neddy Seagoon: " 'Ello Eccles, what are you doing here?"

Eccles: "Everybody godda be somewhere!"

... or ...

[Sounds of pots, pans and cutlery hitting a stone floor]

Neddy Seagoon: "What's that noise?"

Henry Crun: "Oh, that's just Min falling apart ... she's a loose woman, you know!"

Enough!

for those that might be interested in a critical view of Billy Collins:
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/102901/kirsch102901_print.html

OK, I'll read the criticism.