No Carrots, No Kidding

By TF Badilla

Poetry is dead: the critic prescribes T.S. Eliot show-don't-tell poetry, but the crowd plays cold on the prescription. There must be reasons for this, among those being that humans find show-and-show poetry to be too optically contrived as to come petty and trivial, even as such poetry goes in neglect of the also-auditory human: Frank Sinatra's art goes as human as Pablo Picasso's--and poetry finds the capacity for both. Cave painting goes well with cave walls and grunts, but chalk or paint is not articulate wine--it plays poison in the palate, mutes the Muse, and spoils the sport in the read. Eliot-ry makes for the cold crowd reception by belaboring the tale in show-and-show-and-show. "No Carrots, No Kidding" is versified objection to the T.S. Eliot assertion that Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is "... an artistic failure."

• Language: English
• Publisher: TF Badilla
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005303112

TF Badilla

Husband (of one! : ). Father of five. Former teacher, former brewery quality assurance chemist. Poetry enthusiast.

Book preview

Preface

Today’s poetry picks up no pulse:

Poetry overdoses with Prufrock Pills

And requires round-the-clock resuscitation

At the Eliot show-and-show shop.

The crowd clamors for candor, and T.S. Eliot poetry serves it convolutedly contrived and canned.

Over 400 years ago, William Shakespeare would regale the crowd with tales shown and told in lines like Shall I compare you to a summer’s day? The world would warmly tune in and would recite their fondest lines of Cinderella tales—in university lecture halls and at street parties and celebrations and commemorations.

Then, about a hundred years ago, T.S. Eliot would charm poetry into going show-don’t-tell—and the critics, to this day, gush over the Eliot show-and-show-and-show that apes the silent Chaplin film of the 1920s.

But