Wendy Cope

Charles Moore wrote a good piece on the poet Wendy Cope this week in The Daily Telegraph. He pointed out how her use of easy-to-understand words was deceptive because her poems were greater than the sum of their parts - sort of thing. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said (or wrote): "Wendy Cope is without doubt the wittiest of contemporary English poets and says a lot of extremely serious things. I read something a few weeks ago that she is not very popular with other poets. Moore seems to think this is because (a) people like it and buy it without necessarilly being experts on poetry and that upsets "proper poets". (b) Her name makes her sound like "a suburban spinster poet and that brings out the snob in other writers" - a bit loose that! (c) "She writes lines - indeed whole poems - with no unusual words or syntax" which makes other poets think she's no good. She is good. She's subtle and clever and, though you wouldn't think it on first reading one of her poems, quite erudite. But it's love she writes best about. My favourite is, of course: "Bloody men are like bloody buses - /You wait about a year/ And as soon as one approaches your stop/ Two or three others appear." (First verse). Another is rather clever, again about men - they often are about men! "There are so many kinds of awful men -/ One can't avoid them all. She often said/ She'd never make the same mistake again:/ She always made a new mistake instead." (First verse) Here's a fairly new one called "The Widow": I like this piece. I think youd like it too./ We didn't very often disagree/ Back in the days when I sat here with you/ And knew that you were coming home with me./ This is the future. It arrived so fast,/ When we were young it seemed so far away./ Our years together vanished like a day/ At nightfall, sealed for ever in the past./ I can't give up on music, just discard/ The interest we shared because you died./ And so I come to concerts. But it's hard./ Tonight I'm doing well. I haven't cried./ My head aches. There's a tightness in my throat./ And you will never hear another note."