Magpie Poem by gershon hepner

Comparing me to magpies may
be fair, because they love to thieve,
as I do. Words I write and say
are often my recitative
based on the words that others sang,
which I will always predigest
before I add with tweeting twang
my own to build my poemnest.

Mark Ford, who is a Professor English at University College London, wrote an article on Yeats in a recent issue of the TLS. I sent him ten of my Yeats’ inspired poem, complaining that poetry editors consistently reject my poems, and he responded:

Thanks for showing me these. It just shows that time spent reading stuff in literary magazines isn't necessarily as fruitless as it often seems! for like a magpie you seem to find little gobbets that set your poetry off! Maybe I should try this myself some time. I too
am a big Bob Dylan fan, and have just received this week three cds called Genunie Bootleg Series 4 which have some genuinely rare stuff on them. As for whether the magazine editors were right - I personally never feel confident 'judging' poems, which I guess is why
I prefer teaching the likes of Yeats and Heaney to teaching Creative Writing, or editing poetry magazines! I only know when my own stuff comes off - or doesn't!

4/16/08