Yesterday’s blogpost on Brendan Behan prompted a reader to send this.
The discussion reminded me of a story about Brendan Behan.
The writer was once invited to Oxford to take part in a debate about the difference between prose and poetry. His opponent spoke for almost two hours.
Behan rose to his feet and promised to be brief. He recited an old Dublin rhyme:
There was a young fella named Rollocks
Who worked for Ferrier Pollocks
As he walked on the strand
With a girl by the hand
The water came up to his ankles.
“That”, declared Behan, is prose. But if the tide had been in it would have been poetry."
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