Thanks Mary Ann! Two poems that made us laugh today in the High School Library from Mary Ann’s copy of Wendy Cope’s poetry collection Two Cures for Love:
Loss
The day he moved out was terrible –
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn’t a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.
Haiku
A perfect white wine
is sharp, sweet and cold as this:
birdsong in winter.
I may have to order this one, I had to run and photocopy these, although once my colleague Lynn K. finishes, Mary Ann promised I could borrow it next.
In honor of Valentine’s Day 2009 and the publication of Two Cures for Love in paperback, The Daily Telegraph commissioned love poems from Cope, one traditional and 5 breezy text message poems, including:
February’s cold & grey/ &, all in all, a bummer./ B my valentine 2today/ & turn it in2 summer.
Kind of ironic, then, since a month before publishing these she was also calling for the abolition of the poet laureate post in England saying, “She objected that the position of poet laureate blurred the distinction between artistic and worldly achievement, and said many laureates had written ’embarrassingly bad’ poems” when they’re poems for hire (Wake, The Independent, 30 January 2009). It’s a rough gig to be a poet in Britain.
The Uncommon Reader 
