Barbaric Yawp

                  Barbaric Yawp

His “poetry” is not so much a thing

Of barbarism as it is bad Greek

Or Roman oratory.  In its ring

It has the sound of bombast.  No, not sleek,

But more like overstated prose tricked out

As verse on pages.  Rhetoric high-flown

Quite like a blimp that goes on fire, a pout

In silent movies.  He is sounds, a groan

That comes from King James Version psalms opposed

To versey-ness like Emerson’s rhymed lines.

It sounds like gushingness and less composed.

It sounds like rawest ore just heaped from mines.

..It isn’t quite as bad as blurting out

….With pebbles on your tongue, but yet a shout.

Phillip Whidden