Admin Post: The Poetry Page: Social Distancing with Mrs. Hudson

[scfrankles]

And so, after a series of curious events that I needn’t recap here, we find ourselves quarantined in Queen Victoria’s summer home Osborne House, together with a fashion expert, a make-up artist and an actress. To pass the time, Miss Butchart and Miss Butterworth, with the help of Miss Hales, have agreed to give us a lecture and demonstration of which cosmetics our monarch may possibly use.

You may notice Mrs. Frankles is watching from the very back of the room. She is still currently working as a shopgirl and mixing with the public, as her place of employment is classed as selling essential items. Thus she has told me that despite paying careful attention to hygiene, she thinks it best to keep her distance because of my “advanced age”.

And I told her that after that crack, she had d--- well better keep her distance.

But I digress. Before Miss Butchart and Miss Butterworth begin, I give you this quotation to ponder for your poetry, from Doctor Watson’s story “A Study in Scarlet”:



My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.



Beauty is of course purely a female concern, as Mr. Sherlock “I have at least three dressing gowns and like to take an hour over my toilet” Holmes and Doctor “But are you sure this new style of moustache suits me, Mrs. Hudson?” Watson will tell you. (Once we’re out of quarantine that is…)



And here of course is the usual list of poetry forms:

221B verselet, abecedarian poetry, acrostic poetry, alexandrine, ballad, barzelletta, beeswing, blackout poetry, blitz poem, blues stanza, bref double, Burns stanza, call and response, chastushka, cherita, cinquain, circular poetry, clerihew, clogyrnach, colour poems, compound word verse, concrete poetry, Cornish verse, curtal sonnet, débat, décima, descort, diamante, doggerel, double dactyl, echo verse, ekphrasis, elegiac couplet, elegiac stanza, elfje, englyn, enuig, epigram, epistle, epitaph, epulaeryu, Etheree, fable, Fib, florette, found poetry, free verse, ghazal, haiku, hay(na)ku, In Memoriam stanza, Italian sonnet, jueju, kennings poem, lanturne, lies, limerick, line messaging, list poem, lyric poetry, mathnawī, micropoetry, mini-monoverse, musette, nonsense verse, palindrome poetry, pantoum, Parallelismus Membrorum, poem cycle, puente, quatern, quintilla, renga, rhyming alliterisen, riddle, rimas dissolutas, rime couée, rispetto, Schüttelreim, sedoka, septet, sestina, shadorma, sonnet, stream of consciousness, tanka, tercet, terza rima, tongue twister poetry, triangular triplet, tricube, trine, triolet, Tyburn, villanelle, xenolith



So! Queen Victoria’s make-up routine. Ladies, please take it away!