The Money Shot

[vagantes]

Historian with ink that does not lie:
Thirty years of intersecting with the real,
Images of people that move and flicker,
Capturing forever the way it was.

Writes of these our times the monstrous history:
Incest is family fun; bedknobs figure largely;
A fascination with the rectum;
Double dippers was felicitous.

Tell our children all about this mortal misfortune,
So that in reading you they bewail our fate:
The purpose of watching those who sin,
Apart from pleasure, is the gain of self-knowledge,

And learn from the sins of our fathers,
So as not to fall into such misery and distress.
After much display there emerges from behind the camera,
A fat, bald old man who lovingly ejaculates.

O toy historien qui d'ancre non menteuse
Escrits de nostre temps, l'histoire monstrueuse,
Raconte a nos enfans tout ce malheur fatal,
Afin qu'en te lisant ils pleurent nostre mal
Et qu'ils prennent exemple aux pechez de leurs peres,
De peur de ne tomber en pareilles miseres.

[Jack of Hearts]

A synthetic poem, as it were.







J

[Hawkman]

I think I prefer the French bit. It's definitely more fluidly poetic. As a filmmaker I consider myself immensely fortunate to be neither fat nor bald or obsessed with bottoms. In my experience, filming children (with their clothes on I hasten to add) can be problematical. Point a stills camera at a child and it will not keep still. Point a film or video camera at one and they stand rigid and unmoving. Contrary creatures, children.

I did rather like this line:

"The purpose of watching those who sin,
Apart from pleasure, is the gain of self-knowledge,"

although it would read better as: "...is to gain self-knowledge,"

Live and be well - H

[Jack of Hearts]

The French bit is the synthetic part. This poem looks like it's moving in and out of a translation.

Historian with ink that does not lie,
Writes of these our times the monstrous history,
Tell our children all about this mortal misfortune,
So that in reading you they bewail our fate
And learn from the sins of our fathers,
So as not to fall into such misery and distress.

O toy historien qui d'ancre non menteuse
Escrits de nostre temps, l'histoire monstrueuse,
Raconte a nos enfans tout ce malheur fatal,
Afin qu'en te lisant ils pleurent nostre mal
Et qu'ils prennent exemple aux pechez de leurs peres,
De peur de ne tomber en pareilles miseres.

It's French verse.




J

[vagantes]

I cannot for the life of me understand the reason for bringing in a reference to filming children, which is neither implied nor suggested in the poem.

Please explain how some lines by Ronsard are synthetic. He is saying that we need to describe vileness in order to prevent their recurrence, which suggests the poem.

[Hawkman]

I think it is the mention of incest and the line comming soon after, "tell our children". The overall impression given to this reader was of a man forcing his children to perform acts of incest for the camera. It may not have been intended but the implication is there. Also, the mentionn of bedknobs immediately made me think of "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" the children's film by Disney.

Jack: Yes I had noticed, though I don't know if it's original or a quotation. Perhaps vagantes will clarrify.

[Jack of Hearts]

This reader calls the poem 'synthetic' only in observation. Only in the sense that it is more 'put together' than written, with at least two separate parts (presumably what you've written with the French Poet wrote). It's not any kind of commentary on the poem itself.






J

[vagantes]

That's a very sloppy reading about children.

The lines by Ronsard comment on a pornographic movie.

What these comments by these readers seem to illustrate is a need to read only parts rather than the whole.

[Jack of Hearts]

Actually, that isn't a 'reading' at all, in the sense it doesn't deal with content. It's just an observation about how the poem was constructed.







J

[vagantes]

Any observation about a piece of written work is a reading.

[Jack of Hearts]

What these comments by these readers seem to illustrate is a need to read only parts rather than the whole.

Won't make that mistake with your work twice. Shove it.






J

[Hawkman]

I'm afraid, vagantes, that it is you who fail to appreciate the implications of the poem as a whole, the way the nuances and associations of the chosen words interact and build in the English language. By incorporating an unattributed quote of a whole poem, split up and interspersed throughout the text of your own, you have distorted both.

[vagantes]

A writer draws his readers into a relationship with him or her, which the reader then uses to evaluate things in his or her experience.

The poem is about the way we read and it is therefore appropriate to comment on the way the poem is read.

You might notice, Hawkman, that parts of the poem are in italics which suggests the lines are drawn from another writer.

[Hawkman]

The lines by Ronsard comment on a pornographic movie.



Are we talking: Pierre de Ronsard (11 September 1524 – December 1585) if so, how do they comment on the of making pornographic films?

[vagantes]

There are two poems:

A: Those lines written in italics, and for clarity the original is provided.
B: Non italic.

The non-italic poem provides a description of a pornographic film, that uses euphemisms to describe the various sex acts which take place. The title is, of course, a rather obvious clue.

Ronsard's lines describe acts of horror which need to be described in order that we can learn not to repeat them. These lines underscore and amplify the lines, which describe the pornographic action.

Now I could have written a simple poem and said this was inspired by reading some lines of Ronsard.

I could have provided the two poems as complete units.

Instead I thought it would be more fun and more interesting to merge the two together as a sort of palimpsest. (" Such a palimpsest is my brain;such a palimpsest is yours, O Reader")

One model I had in mind is Amours de Voyage by Clough