The prompt for this challenge – to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet – was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind:
My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was writ In water. Dearest friend, it was my wish We two romantics might some autumn sit…
Robert Schechter, meanwhile, channelled Auden, who also wrote a famous elegy to a fellow poet. Here he is on Ogden Nash:Earth, receive an honoured guest. Ogden Nash is laid to rest. Let the Yankee vessel sink Emptied of its light-heartedly whimsical yet somehow undeniably indelible ink.
In a modestly sized but distinguished entry, David Shields earns an honourable mention. The winners pocket £30 apiece.David Silverman (McGonagall on Burns) O Poor deceasèd Robbie Burns — or should we call you Rabbie? Some say you should have been interred ‘neath old Westminster Abbey, Instead of in Dumfries, where your barely cold body they did bury.
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