I started writing this poem some years ago when I spent a semester at Magdalen College in Oxford. It turned up today when I took out my Magdalen College folder and remembered having lunch with David and Stacey when they visited Oxford that November. It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the new century and there was a convention of poets and critics from different countries discussing the influence of Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and other so-called World War I poets. (David gave a paper on "Prufrock" as an anti-war poem.) I came across the poem today, which had nothing to do with the conference but with a tendency in literary criticism. Although I like what I wrote, it sems incomplete. My working title is "The Critic," but I'm not wedded to it. I invite readers of the BAP blog to submit possible 6-line endings. My thanks to David Lehman for being such a dapper sport and for pointing out that the poem needs six more lines. — MA, 15 May 2021
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The Critic
Gives offense; is seen as a truthteller
is an age of compulsory bullshit; but, hell,
this guy’s a fake, and it’s irritating
that he is so goddamn calculating.
I don't believe a word he says.
The more he insults the more praise
he covets and seems to get
from the poetry-hating propeller set.
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