COMPETITION
No. 496: Octet
Competitors are invited to compose an eight- line poem or stanza of a poem on any one of the subjects given below, using four of the fol- lowing five pairs of words as end-rhymes. The rhymes are taken from a well-known poem. The rhyme scheme is optional.
The words: Fame, name; declined, unkind; friend, commend; chaste, unlaced; said, dead.
The subjects: Cabinet Mark H; the suffragettes; the censor and the censored.
In addition to the usual prizes a special prize of one guinea will be awarded to the first entry opened that correctly identifies the poem from which the rhymes were chosen. Entries, marked 'Competition No. 496,' must be in by 22 April.
No. 494: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: The arrival of an Ameri- can in Europe was, as one can readily estimate from his novels, something of a ritual for Henry James—an occasion for the pen to linger in reflective anticipation, for the actual moment of first contact to be held infinitely and delicately in suspension. In short, a solemn occasion, and this week's words, taken from the opening pas- sage of The Ambassadors, might just have sug- gested as much. Certainly the majority of entries were excessively doleful and the large number of competitors for whom the word dock sug- gested law courts rather than high seas argues a strange, if not morbid, fascination for the juridical procedure. Brian Allgar, though indu- bitably on the wrong side of the law and barely within the rules of the competition, doesn't share their concern and wins five guineas:
Dear Sidney: pleasexcuse this typing but my booldy secretarys doing six months for solicit- ing. I would bespeaking to you in person only the phones on the blink and the Jags in dock for an overhual.
you remember we were discussing bringing Fingers in on the cornflakes deal well the sequel to that is someone put the finger on him while he was operating the mediteranean curse racket and he was nicked the minute he disembarked I went to see his missis shes a nice dish of trifle and no mistake I told her Fingers had bungled it again and put a fiendly arm round her. she looked a right little steamer, so I was suprised when she just said 'I always told him he consorted with the wrong lot' and butoned herb louse up again, which just goes to show you can't tryst anybody nowadays.
I yours William
Three guineas to J. A. Lindon, a voluble advo- cate and, one would suspect, a cheerful loser:
`What use, m'Lud and gentlemen of the jury, in bespeaking a transnilotic ferry passage after being bitten in two by a crocodile while attempt- ing to swim? Problems have to be solved as they arise. My client in the dock soon dis- covered that marriage gave him the earache, the sequel to which was a very natural intention to cure the ailment by operating on his wife's tongue. The moment they disembarked from their honeymoon cruise, he quite kindly anaes- thetised her with the bedroom poker and set to work. If the glue he injected failed to stiffen the organ permanently, that is surely a trifle? If he bungled in stitching tongue to gums, would you have succeeded better? Then off to Boulogne via cross-Channel steamer, where he consorted. purely to acquire medical know-how, with a Cameroun student-nurse. This was not a' tryst, as the prosecution alleges, but a consultation.'
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