3.5. Didn't like it as much as her second book, Serious Concerns, but still a good time. The Waste Land limericks the titular poem on their own are worth the price of admission. ( )

Mediocre as a collection, some are great, some are not, some are mental, a few really funny and satirical. Overall, it felt like a very hastily put together book and I blame the editors more than the author for not giving us a better compilation. Cope is a very thoughtful yet impulsive writer and I do love her style of writing but it really doesn't sit well with me when poetry becomes a string of words rather than making something remotely resembling nuance or sense. ( )

It's a bit startling, really, to realize that "vital" rhymes with "title". You wouldn't say so at first sight, but that's why you need to read poetry, aloud.

Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis has three parts, and there is only one poem in Part III:

Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis

It was a dream I had last week
And some kind of record seemed vital.
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I love the title.

It isn't much of a poem, but it does make you smile. That's what many poems in this volume do. There is rhyme and artifice, less beauty and more fun.

While I read a lot of poetry as a student, that was all but over after graduation. I kept buying poetry, but never came to it. My idea was that poetry was exhalted, grand, and all about beauty. The idea to read a book of poetry from cover to cover didn't make sense to me. A few talks with a few good friends about reading poetry, and Club Read on LT made me go back to reading poetry, al first mainly contemporary poetry, and recently classical English poetry as well. (I am currently reading the collected poems of Coleridge and some are hilariously funny.)

The poetry of Wendy Cope in this volume is mostly of the tongue-in-cheek, ironic variety. As in the first lines of this sonnet.

Not only marble, but the plastic toys
From cornflakes packets will outlive this rhyme:
I can't immortalize you, love - our joys
Will lie unnoticed in the vault of time.

These poems of Wendy Cope, first published in 1986, were reissued in a special Poetry Firsts edition of quarto hard cover editions in 2010. ( )

it's good, but I think her later work got much better. ( )

Lighthearted, entertaining and enjoyable poems. Will read again soon. Slim volume easy to take anywhere. ( )