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Jan 2006 A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.
This is a collection of poetry, verse, and rhymes, ranging in length between a couple of lines, to a couple of pages. It includes the witty, the somber, the lewd, the sweet, and the tasteless. For me, it was the perfect thing to pick up when I only had a few minutes here or there. (Waiting for someone to arrive, or waiting for my food in a restaurant, or for my water to boil, or so on and so on.) -Hmmm, I was just distracted now, and picked it up, and went flipping through for ten or twenty minutes!
I don't know if Silcock himself wrote any verse in this book, but I respect him for his taste in collecting it. There's not too much of any one type, and his introductions to sections are nice, and not too long. Another thing I like about it, is the Range of works that he's got. I think it must have taken him an awful lot of research, (reading, and remembering things that he's read.) There are the works by well known poets, and then there's the anonymous works, which were part of oral culture, or was carved on tombstones hundreds of years ago. These are things that I can imagine him looking up in large old volumes. But there's also the poems which were sent in private letters by assorted people, the epigrams made up by politicians, and the short works that were printed in newspapers, magazines, and periodicals. That's what particularly impresses me about this collection. (That, and of course, the fact that many many many of the lines in here are just great and wonderful to read.)
And the well written bit I just came across now is this:
WINE, WOMEN AND WEDDING
The glances over cocktails
That seemed to be so sweet
Don't seem quite so amorous
Over Shredded Wheat.
And there are endless other treasures that made me smile and laugh.