In Competition No. 2917 you were invited to submit a reply from Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress.
Marvell’s mix of cajoling wit and harsher truths failed to persuade the Australian (male) poet A.D. Hope. Here’s an extract from his blistering reply, ‘His Coy Mistress to Mr Marvell’, published in 1978:
Had you addressed me in such terms
And prattled less of graves and worms,
I might, who knows, have warmed to you;
But, as things stand, must bid adieu
The contemporary American poet Annie Finch wasn’t having any of it either. Her equally stinging riposte begins: ‘Sir, I am not a bird of prey:/ a Lady does not seize the day.’
The entry was satisfyingly inventive — Philip Roe, Nick Grace, Martin John, John O’Byrne and Stanley McDermott III were especially good. The winners, printed below, earn £25 each and Robert Schechter snaffles the extra fiver.
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