by Kirby Congdon…….

Those of us who like to write poetry are almost always daunted by its history and its depth. A less intimidating kind of poetry is the ditty which lets us play with words in a casual way without abandoning standards. Light-hearted verse lets us forget that underlying obligation to produce something worth reading. The writing of it is not any easier but, like a crossword puzzle, doing it is its own reward.

As the following ditty illustrates, the rhyme can take over reason. On reading it a friend suggested that the conclusion of the last two lines out-weighed the rest of the piece. As in more serious poetry casual verse can turn up unexpected surprises. We can appreciate Dorothy Parker’s verse when it comes off as neat and finished. The ditty may even survive as part of our verbal lore.

My own introduction to poetry as a child was in hearing the light verse of the three journalists, Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash and Don Marquis. They provided a relief in the difficult time of the Depression between World War I and II.

Small as a wren

but heavy as lead

inside my head

I’m brain-dead again.

How I yearn

to count to ten

Some day I’ll learn

but who knows when?

But wouldn’t you know it,

I’m only a poet.

A weak spot here is the slightly desperate reference to a wren as a measurement of size while lead is an over-used measurement of weight. Nor are the rhymes all that inspired. All of this relies on a very casual ending that is not all that clever and the humor is the only thing that saves the last lines as a conclusion. The three journalists mentioned earlier would have done a better job with the vocabulary and would have taken on a subject more interesting than themselves. The important thing however is that a ditty does not aspire to be a literary monument; its purpose is just to be amused without trying to achieve anything more than that. People have indeed achieved more than that but who wants to be a party-pooper?