Read 'Em And Weep

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It's worse than I possibly could have thought.

― Tom, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A Poem for The Queen Mothers death
AS Easton
The Bitch is dead she drank alot of gin she is the bloated corpse of the empire let the colonials dance now !

― anthony, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

For Princess Margarets Death
AS Easton
She never got to mary her true love
smoked some tobacco
hated the irish,hung out with popstars
AND DIED

― anthony, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A poem for the MArriage of Edward
That sophie is a brittle brancg,
look at her the wrong way and she will break
Touch her and she collapses
Shes got a PR firm and she likes the attention
So Edward do what mommy told you
marry the posh one
EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE GAY

― anthony, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A poem
By JEL about nothing in particular

Skipping in the shadows
Yeah! you got a fancy walk!
Gripping to the willows
No! you ain't one to talk!

― jel --, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think that the Quilted Northern commercial that shows the Queen Mum as the head of the toilet paper angels is a better tribute.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

All poems subdivided into sections wiv numbers = DUD-DIDDLY-DUDSKY no matter who or what it's about. I didn't read it.

― Jeff W, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think Anthony should be doing the poetry. And Dan can draw pictures of the quilted northern clouds.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Queen Mother
There will be no other
At least for three generations
By which point I how we have joined the ever increasing group of Republican nations.

― Pete, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There may not be another Queen Ma ever even if we do keep them all on as I seem to remember seeing a prog that said that they invented the title of Queen Ma specially for her as she got all stampy-footy tantrumy after the King died and she couldn't be a Queen any more. Of course this could just have been a weird dream about royalty.

― Emma, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"I how we have"?

― Nicole, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think abolishing Princesses would do the job.

Emma you didn't dream it, all the pageantry and ceremony this week was basically knocked up on the hoof during the first 30 years of the 20th C. and "Queen Mother" is a one-off title.

― Tom, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Andrew Motion = EJ Thribb (17 1/2)

― DG, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"I how we have"?

True poetry transcends grammar.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Does this mean our country's current poet laureate is obliged to write a poem about Reagan if he bites the dust during his tenure? I can't hardly wait.

― Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the bitch is dead

she fuct with my head

and her fucking funeral made the tv station cancel Angel

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

The End.

― Queen G, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Billy Collins would write something a lot funnier and less pretentious. Motion's felt like it could have been a decent poem, but was being forced into this praise the queen mode.

― bnw, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But this means that one day Brit kiddies in school will be asked "In what way was the Queen Mother like salmon?"

― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I thought that was a reference to the fish bone she got stuck in her throat. Shurely the person who should write a tribute to the Queen Mum is LAWRENCE, aka Go-Kart Mozart, following on from his previous effort:

The Queen Mum she is great
The Queen Mum she is top
And now she's out of hospical
She's the Queen of the old Hip Op.

― MarkH, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i have probably misread the metaphor but that's okay

― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ABC Morning News described the Queen Mum this morning as having had "massive popularity" and having been "universally loved."

Are you saying they're wrong?

― Dare, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

She was very popular, dare, and widely respected - especially by the older generations. Was it 200,000 people that traipsed past her coffin in last 3 days? A significant percentage of the UK population is clearly still pro-monarchy. Nobody can be 'universally' loved tho'. This thread and the M&S one is, in part at least, a reaction to such overstatements.

― Jeff W, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

my friend [kQg] just said a v.smart thing to me: she cried when lady di died, but was scoffing at some woman on tv crying for the QM while we were on the phone, and then said: "Well, today's a day that when you cry, you can actually be crying for any number of private of reasons, and you nevah have to explain yourself to anyone. When I cried for di I was crying a BIT for her, but more for things to do with me and my life, which her death put in my mind."

― mark s, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, I thought Motion's poem had some good moments, but they got buried in the morass of the whole. As someone said today, it sounds like a Hallmark card. Writing poetry to order = complete dud. Although, of course, that is what he is paid to do.

― Ally C, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i almost cried today cos THE FUCKING BITCH"S FUNERAL made the tv station not play Angel and then the other one fucked up the west wing...Oz Temptation Island is just not good enough to save one's mortal soul...

― Queen G, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

considering the amount of mechanical limbs she had, the real tragedy of the Queen Mum's death is that it proves cyborg technology isn't as advanced as one might hope

― owen hatherley, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

tennyson was actually pretty good at writing this kind of thing to order

i hoped when he started talking about salmon it was going to turn into a ted hughes thing via: "crow. SNAP! the neck twists. the jaw the gore bleak trees, pecked eye under sky, twig as bone, the taut nerve dulled, nature feeds..."

― mark s, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Iron Maiden should set that thing to music.

― Kris, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the best response to the queen mum's death so far --> apparently 7,000 people called the BBC last saturday to complain angrily that their blackadder reruns had been cancelled in favor of weepy queen mum memorial footage! hahaha!

i'm impressed that they're still dragging this whole thing out. when does the official mourning period

― geeta, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

end?

anyway i like the ile tribute poems better! every poem should end with "EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE GAY" - anthony submit those poems to the bbc pronto!!!

― geeta, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

***ABC Morning News described the Queen Mum this morning as having had "massive popularity" and having been "universally loved."

Are you saying they're wrong?***

Dare: Only that the news services must have only polled the over-40 section (many of which are already staunch royalists). I bet many of those younger than 30 only noticed because it cancelled "Topless Darts"...or whatever else was going bare for the night.

As for the pomp, it reminds me of the circus that was Diana's funeral in 97. It went on for so long, the funeral was beginning to resemble a circus. All that needed was a tear-soaked mime troupe. BUT, at least, all the flowers and procession was more suited to someone the Queen Mum's age.

― Nichole Graham, Tuesday, 9 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hmm. 'Twould have been nice if they'd polled anyone, but my guess is those comments were just a newscaster winging it. Stock sentiment, etc.

― Dare, Wednesday, 10 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tom's post upthread reminds me that a book about the Windsors' manipulation of their image, published in 1983, was called "The Invention Of Tradition". Which was of course exactly what it was: aiming for historical legitimacy by dressing yourself up in imagery which *sounded* ancient. Having once gone to Royal Manor School here on Portland - which sounds like the name of a 400-year-old provincial grammar school but is actually what the former Tophill Secondary Modern chose to call itself when reconstituted as a comprehensive as recently as 1985 - I can relate to that. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the "heritage period" of the mid-80s cross- fertilised with a huge bout of enthusiasm (the last ever on that scale?) for the royals: the two big weddings, and they still had saturation media coverage on a scale unthinkable now except when somebody like the QM dies.

That being said, I found the ritualism of the funeral moving, despite myself, in the way it definitively put a line under a part of our past, and also in its continuing to exist while all its meaning has been drained away from under it. The key to what we're continuing to see in Britain: a revolution not of violence, or of edifices, but of the mind.

― Robin Carmody, Thursday, 11 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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