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Colley Cibber Always Has Something To Say; A Satire
Can you believe that Alexander Pope?---
he is a craven and conniving jerk.
With feelings' poetry, he cannot cope;
and borrows, for his poems, from others' work.
To me, that is just dawdling disrespect---
the kind that I most totally reject.
I am quite serious about my craft;
and I am quite convinced that it is art.
I write of my existence, from the heart,
and my truth never stymies, stalls, nor smothers
beneath that burden of some ancient others'
dusty traditions, cold and dark, like tombs
full of mould, worms, and dead men's skeletons.
And now this horse's pompous ass presumes
to name me in his poem, The Dunciad,
as London's---even England's---chiefest Dunce.
He says I only write from ignorance
because, in one poem, I said, "I feel bad."
I do not need to waste my time with looks
into forgotten poets' haughty books.
I do not need to make examination
of Vergil's verses to find inspiration,
or use his epics to make imitation
for which my readers would make celebration---
all them who will love me for the duration
of their wrecked lives, and seek a confirmation
that I am more than an effaced headstone,
more than a slopjar full of piss and moan;
and that I offer them the sound and sense
of my most literate experience
expressed well. I offered to mentor him---
to turn about his rather questionable
achievements (and, they do seem mightly slim)
to some purpose that is redeemable.
But my offer was, off the cuff, refused;
and, in his sore rage, verbally abused;
not quite the answer that I had expected;
and toward me, rather (I think) misdirected;
as if, to refined Art, I was a traitor.
He said that even the most hungry rooks
would not find my flesh a flavorful dish.
And that, in dead canals, I like to fish
with sewing threads, and rusted, bent fishooks---
of which I am a proven master-baiter.
I hate that hunchbacked freak, who should have kissed
my better verse a long, long time ago.
He should have shown a better courtesy
toward my proven originality.
He puts my panties in a ghastly twist---
not good for my unsteady mind, you know.
Starward
[*/+/^]
