Wendy Cope - Style

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.

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