Sunday, September 04, 2011

Ahh, this did my heart good. A physician-poet who writes a humorous parody of Dante -- make sure to follow the link and read the poem. It's pretty amazing, in terza rima, too!

The scoop: Doctor wins national humor poetry contest

Local physician John Harris never considered himself a poet, but he indulged his writerly side on a burst of inspiration and won national recognition in the process.
Harris' poem, "The Flight Line Commedia," won the 2011 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, earning him $1,500 and, as he describes it, "a nice shirt I'll proudly wear to the tennis court."
Based on Dante's "Divine Comedy," the poem uses Dante's style of terza rima - an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme- to mock the difficulties of air travel, imagining comeuppances for stingy airline executives and pushy, impatient passengers.
Harris, 63, said the idea came to him after a hellish airplane trip. "What would Dante have done?" Harris said he thought to himself.
He worked on the poem for about four months and says he's considering having it illustrated and self-publishing it in book form. He says he doesn't plan on writing again "unless I get the urge to trash 'The Odyssey.' "

To read "The Flightline Commedia," go online to www.winningwriters.com/contests/wergle/2011/we11_pastwinners.php

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