The Poetic Garden Centre by Darrell Barnes and Lucy Newlyn

The Poetic Garden Centre

The villanelles are looking quite, quite splendid; that anapæst is coming on a treat. I wonder just how many staff have tended the sonnets with their dainty little feet? Oh look! Is that a Humorous sestina climbing up that stanza over there? And what is this? I’m sure it’ s Terza rima yes: right first time - its rhyme scheme’s rather spare. Now, what’s for lunch? I think I'll have a salad that looks rather nice: Home made pantoum (never heard of it). I’ll take the ballad. We’ll sit beneath the haiku in full bloom. A glass of ode? A bottle of cæsura? Enjambement is always rather flat; I’d rather have a sip of something purer, but I’ll settle for a than-bauk, come to that. Such a lot of interesting flowers a clerihew? Now that is rather rare. (I can carry on like this for hours and hours, but you’ve clearly had enough. I’ll stop right there).

Darrell Barnes

The grumpy Garden Centre shopper

I was hoping that I’d find some anaphora to help my patch of pleonasm along but all they have in stock is common zeugma and some weedy looking polysyndeton.

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I’d like to fill my border with synesis to stop the catachresis coming through but all I’ve found is seedlings of synchisis and a wilting tray of praeteritio.

I’ve asked them for advice about aporia but they couldn’t help at all with tackling this; they told me I should try paronamasia which only works with aposiopesis!

They recommend some hysteron-proteron to keep the rampant hypallage at bay but I think I’m better off with asyndeton which comes in a small user-friendly spray.

Those are impressive hendyiadis saplings and I’ve seen no better antistrophes than those but all in all this place is disappointing they seem to be uninterested in prose.

Lucy Newlyn

That’s very kind - but now look what you’ve started: what first was just a trip to B&Q has undergone a change and now departed on other tracks (I blame that clerihew). Lots of plants beyond my comprehension, many Greek - the list goes on and on, and even then some never get a mention and would tax the gardening skills of Monty Don. How many of your purchases are Hardy? Will that Spenser ode survive a Frost? Best wrap it in a scarlet-coated cardy, the mantle of which Oscar knew the most. Herminius var. subsp. Lord Macaulay is suffering from Flecker, loathsome blight!

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Tell me why that Sassoon’s looking poorly, and will that Red, Red Rose survive the night? Time to stop. An onset of Sea Fever has made my Carpe Diem rather hot. Before this thread goes on and on for ever I’ll have a glass of Marmion. Thanks a lot!

Darrell Barnes

How many of your purchases are Hardy? This Garden Centre’s useless if you’re looking for hedging plants and annuals, I see but it offers entertainment for the idle and there’s even a select menagerie.

I hoped to find some saplings on the Firbank but only found a Garland on the Greene; I could hear a blackbird Synge a joyous Carroll although a merry Swift could not be seen.

There was room inside my trolley for a Peacock running Wilde he fell and fluttered in a Brooke so I hauled him out and dried his drooping feathers; now he’s nestled in, alongside his friend Hooke.

(There’s a Bunyan on his Foot, and he looks Haggard but not half as bad as did the poor old Pope when that Long fellow got married to the Bishop and he Withered in the Lodge without a hope.)

This Nursery’s not the only place that’s useless for trees and Hardy hedging-plants, you loon; and this fact provides the moral to my story (you guessed that I’d supply at least one soon): while you search inside the churchyard for a Hawthorne

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the Snow will fall and settle on the Graves and the Sexton will stand chatting with the Goldsmith looking Sterne-ly on all human fools and knaves.

Lucy Newlyn

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