Style
Some of her poems are written in the persona of a struggling male poet, Jake Strugnell, a slightly seedy figure from Tulse Hill. She displays her talent for parody with targets ranging from the sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney:
My true love hath my heart and I have hers
We swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elated
But now whenever one of us refers
To 'my heart' things get rather complicated.
to reducing T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to limericks:
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me—
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.
Her style has been compared to that of John Betjeman and Philip Larkin.
Read more about this topic: Wendy Cope
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)