GretchenRyan:

Men ! Some young girl acts the tart and you get all atwitter. (...)

Oh do hush, Gretchen. :) (Hope that doesn't sound too harsh. I visited London at the end of May for the first time, and am something of an Anglophile in other ways, so know just a tad of the dialect...just not the relative emotive force of some of the idioms.)

Seriously: I'm atwitter at the prospect of a Tuesday Poet who can write. Do you know what a rare thing that is around here? For a long time, the Tuesday Poems were so stupefyingly bad that some of us (with me usually holding forth the banner) were calling them the Tuesday Tripe. (I know some consider tripe a delicacy, but I'm not one of them.) This poem is excellent as a contemporary poem. About time.

I find the girl's "tartness" disturbing. And that's the point of the poem: it is disturbing, for her female peers and everyone else of all ages alike. And it is reminiscent. I could tell you some stories about a sophomore high school class and three girls I knew there: two tarts and a sugar cookie (or whatever it is you call one of those over there): one tart behind me, one tart immediately to her left and the sugar cookie in the next row. I would've taken the cookie over two dozen each of the tarts. Alas, as such girls seemingly always do, she already had a steady boyfriend...

Many of you women (if I may say it) completely underestimate the Power of Nice. The girl in this poem does. Too bad for her. Too bad.

wr ()()