Monday, April 1, 2013

No foolin'

Since it's April Fools' Day and also the first day of National Poetry Month (as declared by the Academy of American Poets), let us start out with a little Robert Frost:

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,
And I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

Frost wrote a number of little poems like that of two or three lines.  Some are playful, some are deep, most are both.  Where a lesser poet, even if a similar idea had occurred to him, would have tried stretching it into at least eight lines, Frost got to the immediate point and quit.

For evidence that Frost was a master of the succinct profundity, look no further than his poem entitled "Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length."  Although I like the poem very much, I've always wondered why he bothered to write it -- the title says it all.

Happy (high and long) April to all.

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