An English Patchword ( rewrite)

[wasellajam]

Hi, Michael. I've been enjoying your poem starting with the original. I liked everything that was patchwork about it: the long blanket of lines with rhymes hanging off the ends, the hodgepodge of meter that was noticeable but erratic, the bits of nursery that ran through it and in the end painted a picture of England. I even liked the breaks you gave me to catch by breath. I wasn't happy about all the changes suggested but, not surprisingly, I find the current version a stronger and more easily readable poem. Some notes:

Cover me ever so quietly
with a quilt of everything England maybe a comma here. This line gave me the impression you weren't capitalizing the start of every line so A below threw me. So consistency.
A ginger-bread bed-spread gingerbread bedspread
With every coast and Inland.
 
A patchwork feast of fields and shires
Boundaries and what-not-ments.
Squares of cloth with lots of plots
And patches and small allotments Dropping the first "and" improves the meter and you don't need it.
 
Within it all those Tall Tales
Woven well together:
Green Men and grandes dames
All in an English weather.
 
A hunter and a runaway hare runaway hare is lovely and a strong improvement.
In brilliant broad embroidery
Stitched and fixed higgledy-piggledy
Needle-neat and orderly.
 This reads beautifully now.

Piping boys and girls and babes
Dressed in the altogether
With John Keats among the pleats Nice internal rhyme but wonky meter, it's hard to promote "with".
And dancing that goes on forever.
 
Knights on horseback, love in a haystack
All their groaning sewn in, Nice quilt reminder.
Grandfather clocks and Goldilocks
In the house she's all alone in.

Tea-cup spills and Welsh Hills Meter's a little wonky here.
Cat's hairs on the borders
Cotswolds and blanket folds
Disruptions and disorders. Lovely lines and very quilty.
 
Little Jack Horner there in the corner
Rucked in and tucked up
While Little Bo Peep has let her sheep
Get all muddled and mucked up.
 L2 and L4 read off to me, the whole stanza could use a meter tweak.

Tipsy maids in Gypsy Glades with
Garlands on a Mayday
Cats in hats with cricket bats
And crones playing croquet.
L1-3 read so beautifully then clunks at L4. 

A Brueghel scene you might have seen
But never on a bed-spread:
The heroes and the heroines
From all the tales that you’ve read. I think you could drop "that".
 
Simple Simon and the Pie Man
The Jack and the Beanstalk peddler I don't know where you live but seems pedlar is acceptable, your choice.
Who'll turn you into Puss in Boots
A prince or Cinderella.
 
There's a stain on the pane where Sir Gawain
Stands outside a dragon's den;
And biscuit crumbs where Humpty comes Fan of the stain and biscuit crumbs.
With all the king's horses and all the king's men.
 
Cover me over with the quilt
Quieten what I’m discovering: "quieten" is new to me, thanks.
My adulthood stole my childhood
And I am still recovering.
And here you've added what I often have to cut from mine, an amusing, clever little summary that maybe the reader should have gotten from the poem.

Lovely internal rhymes throughout, fun to read and I think the work you've been doing here is worthwhile, I hope you're enjoying it. Thanks for posting.

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