Dear Will Shakespeare
Dear Will,
How are things out there?
just thought you'd like to know,
that you're eleventh on the Top Poets list
as of today (though I should mention
that the hittership is 75% from
the New World that you just foresaw
before you 'closed your book'; not
that that's relevant - they speak an
English, isn't that great, which is nearer
to your own sound than the strangled
glottal stops of Cheapside Thames-side these sorry days) ...
So to the list: and so you'll understand
that no offence is meant, etcetera...
top dog today is Sheldon Silverstein -
the sort of oddball who lives down the street
just where the sidewalk ends,
whom your children hang around with all the time -
they loved his poetry when they were kids,
and still love him now they're all grown-up
for what he brought to their childhood - I bet
you wrote some poems like that for your kids
but never got them published? So I know
that though my fellow poets sniff,
you'll grant him - love?
The second is a curious case -
you may know him as Nuftali Basoalto,
we know him now as Pablo Neruda -
and though he wrote in Spanish
(they didn't conquer England but
did rather well on Americ's southern shores)
you'll recognise him even in translation
as a fellow poet, worldwide in his heart...
The third is Maya Angelou - now, no-one
wrote more deeply about women than you did,
and of the human spirit:
so though our fellow poets and critics sniff once more,
she is Woman in Splendour,
Woman as Survivor - so,
remembering your Mistress Quickly and her merry mates,
you'll recognise her instantly for what she is?
majesty - thy name is woman...
The fourth is Langston Hughes - a bit of history here:
the human spirit under great duress,
unvanquished - and if this may oft confine
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poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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