Competition No. 2659: Novel approach

In Competition No. 2659 you were invited to take the title of a well-known novel and write an amusing poem with the same title. There are some long lines this week, which leaves space only to mention unlucky losers Mae Scanlan and Max Ross. The winning six get £25 each; Frank McDonald nabs £30.

Anna Karenina used to cause Lenin a
few sleepless nights when he took her to bed;
and though he saw Tolstoy as big as the Bolshoi
he thought it revolting his books weren’t red.
Glum Dostoyevsky considered her risqué
and called her shenanigans flighty and vain;
and he was astonished at how she was punished:
a cleaver should cleave her, not wheels on a train.
Anna Karenina, mystica femina,
used to give Stalin a gallon of fun;
Old Joe would envision her held as his prisoner,
making him laugh when she played with his gun.
Anna Karenina used to put men in a
whirlwind of passion, so Leo declares,
but a present day student just couldn’t and wouldn’t
get any enjoyment from Anna’s affairs.
Frank McDonald (Anna Karenina)

Folk loved to hear Jude perorate;
He dearly loved to speak;
But what he said was nubilate,
Caliginous, oblique.

Some took him for an orphic sage,
While others thought he dealt
In witty, learned persiflage —
Too deep for them, they felt.

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Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

His abstruse, gnomic, zen-like style
Held audiences pent
In awed, suspenseful silence while
They pondered what he meant.

Yet those who knew him best agreed
That — not to be unkind —
Old Jude, apostle of the weed,
Was stoned out of his mind.
Basil Ransome-Davies (Jude the Obscure)

I woke up this morning feeling unreal,
Like the virtual remains of a virtual meal.
I went to the mirror to take a good look.
I was just a quotation from somebody’s book.

My wife didn’t know me, but what is a wife?
What is a marriage? What is a life?
The telephone told me I’d won a world cruise.