Author Information
At The Plantagenets' Summer Place
As Queen, and in her teenaged years before,
Anne Neville did not sponsor, nor enjoy,
contests in which the realm's poets compete.
Prizes, she said, were counted like a score:
after a few, some poets can annoy
their readers by writing the same old thing---
even reciting them before the King.
Sufficient as chief prize should be the reading
before the gathered court; nothing else needing.
This pleased the King; he thought Queen Anne was right;
and so decreed immediate abolition
of poems gathering into a competition.
Helpful too: while she spoke of this, his vision
was caught by her, as, in his line of sight,
her shoes slipped from her crimson-stockinged feet---
pleasure promised to him later tonight.
