A Will to Whip

[Hawkman]

A whippoorwill was wondering
if its whip was up to scratch,
and idly conversational,
it asked a passing cat.

Tell me, said the whippoorwill,
now does it seem to you,
that lashing with a whip in school
is treating pupils ill?

I’m all for corporal punishment,
the pussy purred right back,
it keeps the buggers up to snuff
and stops them getting slack.

I like to see them kept in line,
the whippoorwill replied,
but just a single braided chord
is all I’ve been supplied.

I’ve teeth and claws to make ‘em work
but flaying’s quite a knack;
fortunately I’ve been graced
with nine-tails, said the cat.

But I’ve so many students,
moaned the bird in much dismay,
with just a single tail in hand
I’m beating them all day;

life’s too short, I’ve only one,
I don't have time for that.
Fortunately I’ve been graced
with nine, replied the cat.

[Haunted]

A fun exchange you got here Hawk, and even funnier considering that one eats the other... Actually I don't really know, is the whippoorwill a big mama and able to fend for itself? They seem to be getting along just fine, which is good for world peace. I did get confused with the nine-tails which then changed to "one" in the last stanza Initially I thought it meant life but then nine lives contradicts it. May need clarification there. Still it puts me in a good mood :)

[tailor STATELY]

Cat-o-nine tails, lol. Quite witty.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Hawkman]

Hi Haunt: Thanks for reading. Yes, I can see what you're getting at in the last stanza. I've altered the punctuation to make it more obvious that the first two lines are a continuation of the whippoorwill's speech, with the cat's comment confined to the last two lines. I dare say the bird felt safe because it was so well camouflaged :D

TS: Thanks for giving my poem the once-over. glad you enjoyed it.

Live and be well - H

[virtuoso]

A witty, animated tale (no pun intended). I think that you probably wrote this poem in a hurried manner. The language is conversational, but it reads on a fifth grade level. In the first stanza, you could be a bit more reflective and descriptive with your diction. In line one, "A whipporwill sat pondering"/ If its whip could thrash tails"/In mock jest whistled"/ "at a purring pussy". In stanza two, the line, "now does it seem to you" seems redundant and unnecessary. The phrase "buggers up to snuff" is too cliche-ish. You can be witty without using trite cliches. Maybe, "It spurs anal retention/ and scratches their frontal lobes". You can use bird imagery (spurs, scratches) to give the poem a little more depth. The last, two stanzas are fine to me. I love the light, witty scene you have concocted. Look forward to reading more of your poems.

[Hawkman]

Curious. You say that you find the poem witty and amusing, then proceed to make suggestions that would make it not so. You obviously don't know much about ballads. However, thanks for the bump, which must've knocked angliholic's thread off the top spot for almost 2.6 nanoseconds before he reclaimed it.

H

[AuntShecky]

This is a witty ditty, indeed, with one stubborn glitch: you want the possessive form of "its" in line 2. Lose the apostrophe, which makes it the contraction for "it is."

One of the great American songwriters, Johnny Mercer, loved including references to our feathered friends in his lyrics. Something about your piece here reminded me of that, even though your speaker has a much more sardonic streak.

According to my trusty Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a cat-o'-nine-tails was a whip which the Army and Navy used for flogging, and unbelievably "not formally abolished as a civil punishment for crimes of violence until 1948." The "nine tails" on the whip came from popular superstition, in the belief that "flogging by 'a trinity of trinities' would be both more efficient and more effacacious."

Same reference on the "nine lives" deal: "A cat is more tenacious of life than many animals, it is careful and hardy and after a fall generally lands upon its feet without injury, the foot and toes being well padded." Bear in mind the phrase existed for centuries, long before the emergence of Warner Brothers cartoon.

[Jack of Hearts]

Trinity of trinities, what a fine poem.






J

[Hawkman]

Auntie: Aaaaaaaaaargh! Not again! A typo! A typo! It's not as if I don't know the difference. Its errant apostrophe has been deleted. As for the Cat, well flogging stayed in the penal system for longer than that. I believe Eric Mason was the last man to be flogged with a cat o'nine tails in prison in the UK, but I can't give a date for this. I know flogging was retained on the Isle of Man until quite recently, though I think they used the birch. Apparently, they were quite reluctant to dispense with it there.

Anyway, I'm delighted that you enjoyed it - the poem, not the flogging :D So thanks for reading.

Jack: Thank'e sir. Glad you enjoyed it.

Live and be well - H

[blank|verse]

You really should write out 'its' a thousand times, Hawk! :)

'Will to Whip' is a characteristically Hawk poem, but I feel this one falls a little flat at the end. The formalist in me also wants to suggest how some inventive use of nine - three tercet stanzas interlocked? - would have been a nice touch, rather than the meat-and-potatoes ballad stanza...

[Hawkman]

:ack2::banghead::biggrinjester:

Hi b/v: I'd say that was fair comment. Tercets of trimetre would have been a way to go. I may play with the idea in my spare time. I've not been particularly inspired recently, so you're lucky to even get a ballad out of me ;) It's nice to have you around to give us a prod occasionally.

Live and be well - H

[Lokasenna]

I agree with the above - this is a funny and witty poem. I love the central idea, and I think you convey it very well indeed. And as for writing in the style of a ballad... well, you'll have no complaints from me.

The conversational style works very well, though if I wonder whether it would be just a little easier to follow if you were to use speech marks to mark out the bits of direct speech. It's only a small thing, but it did strike me as a slight wrong-note.

[Hawkman]

Hi Loki and thanks for weighing in :) I'm glad you have no problems with ballads :D Personally I wish I had your proficiency with OE and Norse. I love the rhythms and sounds, but unfortunately I haven't spent eons studying it, so a) my pronunciation is crap and b) I don't have sufficient understanding. I only have a very basic OE dictionary and it is rather limited in scope, so if I can find a word at all, it makes comprehension painfully inadequate and slow.

As for quotation marks: I hummed and hahed over whether to include them and I left them out purely because all those dots would have made the poem look rather messy on the page.

Glad you enjoyed it anyway. :)

Live long and prosper - H