Analysis of Poets

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)



Each poet that I know (he said)
Has something funny in his head,
Some wandering growth or queer disease
That gives to him strange unease.
If such a thing he hasn't got,
What makes him write his silly rot?
All poets' brains, so I have found,
Go, like the music, round and round.

Why they are suffered e'er to tread
This sane man's earth seems strange (he said).
I've never met a poet yet,
A rhymster I have never met
Who could talk sense like any man -
Like I, or even you, say, can.
They make me sick!  The time seems ripe
To clean them up and all their tripe.

And yet (he stopped and felt his head)
I met a poet once (he said)
Who, when I said he made me sick
Hit me a punch like a mule's kick.
That only goes to prove again
The theory that I maintain:
A man who can't gauge that crazy bunch;
No poet ought to pack a punch.

Of all the poetry I've read
I've never yet seen one (he said)
That couldn't be, far as it goes,
Much better written out in prose.
It's what we eat, I often think;
Or, yet more likely, what they drink.
Aw, poets!  All the tribe, by heck,
Give me a swift pain in the neck.


Scheme AABBCCDD AAEEFFGG AAHHXXII AAJJKKLL
Poetic Form
Metre 11011111 11010011 110011101 1111101 11011101 11111101 11011111 11010101 111101011 11111111 11010101 0111101 11111101 11110111 11110111 11110111 01110111 11010111 11111111 11011011 11011101 0101101 011111101 11011101 11010011 11011111 11011111 11010101 11111101 11110111 11010111 11011001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,072
Words 225
Sentences 14
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 204
Words per stanza (avg) 56
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:10 min read
94

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet known for his humorous poems, especially "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke", published in the early 20th century. Though Dennis's work is less well known today, his 1915 publication of The Sentimental Bloke sold 65,000 copies in its first year, and by 1917 he was the most prosperous poet in Australian history. Together with Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, both of whom he had collaborated with, he is often considered among Australia's three most famous poets. While attributed to Lawson by 1911, Dennis later claimed he himself was the 'laureate of the larrikin'. When he died at the age of 61, the Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Lyons suggested he was destined to be remembered as the 'Australian Robert Burns'. more…

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