James Russell Lowell, who had privately called Griswold "an ass and, what's more, a knave", composed a verse on Griswold's temperament in his satirical A Fable for Critics: But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on— A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm dressed, He goes for as perfect a — swan as the rest.
By his mid 30s, he was composing a verse autobiography (an act of hubris akin to a pop star writing his life at 19). "Another Life" (1973) is a pretentious, pressure-cooker affair, a tour de force fatally uneasy with itself.
JUNEAU, Alaska — It has been nearly a quarter-century since a former Alaska poet laureate composed a second verse for the Alaska state song, adding lines to celebrate the diverse indigenous people of the Last Frontier.
Down the road, below the Hungarian Reformed Church and at the bend by the river, local residents carefully guard the tree where Transylvanian-born Endre Ady, one of Hungary's great poets, composed a few verses.
By 1940, Guthrie had landed in New York, where on Feb. 23, in a fleabag Midtown Manhattan hotel, he pulled out his guitar and, using a tune lifted from the Baptist hymn "Oh My Lovin' Brother," composed a six-verse song.
Playing and singing with a rumba band at the swanky Orchid Room, Young Tiger adopted the calypsonian's practice of instant commentary on the rich and famous and composed a few verses on the spot when Prince Philip and party paid the club a visit.
To amuse colleagues, Dr. Jude composed an 11-verse ballad, "The Galloping Goby Blues," portraying the goby as the fish that swallowed the Great Lakes.
Neruda composes a little verse for Mario right on the spot.
You can compose a nonsense verse, build your own dictionary, conduct English experiments in the science lab (including turning text into Morse code and then e-mailing it to a friend) or simply gen up on today's buzzword and how to use it.
But, some poets argue that the lack of rules can actually be more difficult and challenging, or as the poet Robert Frost describes the difficulty of composing a free verse poem, it's like "playing tennis without a net".
There Ferdowsī composed a satire of 100 verses on Sultan Maḥmūd that he inserted in the preface of the Shāh-nāmeh and read it to Shahreyār, at the same time offering to dedicate the poem to him, as a descendant of the ancient kings of Persia, instead of to Maḥmūd.
