Auntie's Anti-Poems

An amusing read - and filled with so many sly, witty observations.

I noted the change from 'it' to 'he' (L 11) then back to 'it' - which made me pause for thought because I always thought la Luna was a 'she'.

A seasonal delight now that the shortest day is over and done with. Best wishes for 2011.

H

What a tour de force! Auntie, now I read it again and will go to sleep thoughtful... shed the sorrow, be like me said the moon... hmmm... your moon reminded me of "mine" I had seen (and wrote about, but it's yet a draft) while on the flight, lately, from Jerusalem to Paris, it went with me all the way long! and spoke to me too, though I have to look up the notes to remember the message. Although it didn't really manage to cheer me up, I still think it's outstanding moons can talk, don't you agree?

My very best to you, Auntie,

Bar

Well, I don't think you need me or anyone else to tell you about the consistently high quality of the poems you post on this thread, Aunty.

The latest is very chatty and imaginative, if very prosey, and happily reminds us that winter's volta means longer days to come.

'Ill Lumination' draws an excellent comparison and brings 'The Tempest' to mind, with its consideration of how the democratization of language isn't always wholly beneficial.

Enjoyable and accomplished poems, all.

Thanks for all your previous comments.^^^^

My next number is a response and/or feminine counterpart to a poem posted by Hawkman way, way back in early August of last year:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=54819

Better late than never, I suppose, for this little ditty we like to call



For Bitter and Far Worse


The fresh-faced bride, still clad in strapless white,

blessed the night

while holding both her head and fond hopes high,

sweetly shy,

so sure her groom would hear, nearing the hall,

Custom’s call.

He’d hoist her up, as her veil touched the floor;

even more

to honor ceremony’s threshold mete,

off her feet

he did sweep her, but then said of the room:

“Get a broom.”

Scant time she crossed the bridge from bride to wife,--

what a life!--

worn out from picking up socks and–I swear!--

underwear.

A scarce year found her tightly bound in some

kid-dom come,

as she came home from a day’s work to another

as Mother.

The mister’s ruse of nights out with the boys’

manly joys

concealed a back-up babe, all game and so not shy

standing by.

Where once the lock of wedded bliss felt loose,

now a noose

tightly wound itself ‘round her still youthful neck.

What the heck:

more quickly than hubby leaping from bed,

fast she sped

to Court, whence despair and domestic rot

tied the “Not.”

Deadlocked no more, to single bliss set free,

“Good for me!”

she crowed, as dames for ages shed their curse,

wed for worse.

Well Auntie, This certainly deserves a response, and as you cliam it was I who inspired this witty gem as a response to my Deadlock, even if it was a while ago, It is only fitting that I should start the ball rolling! Doubtless it is as true as mine, up to a point :D but it only goes to show that the institution of marriage is the creation of a sick and unreasonable mind, which seeks to impose order upon a human nature which is naturally chaotic. We are mostly but ships in the night who sometimes chart a parallel course for a while. The lucky ones are those who depart from the same port with the same destination and travel in company for the entire voyage. In convoy they risk the U-boats of fate and storms of fortune on equal terms, and celebrate together at journey's end...

There is something familliar about the format of your poem, but I just can't place it for the moment. I hope you will enlighten us at some point.

Great poem Auntie, Live and be well - H

It's almost like a catechism - with some extremely cutting responses.

It actually reminded me of William Blake's abhorrence of marriage - defined as the paternalistic slavery of womanhood.

H

Very well put, Auntie! I enjoyed reading your poem, though it presents only one aspect of this very ancient "institution". This is not a place to discuss the actual marriage, but I see what you address here (as I did for Hawk's poem), it illustrates how an empty shell (institution as opposed to choice by true affinity and the power of blessing...) does more evil than good...
Your poems always give much to think, thanks for this reading!

With my lasting thought, Bar

Thank you so much , Bar and Hill for your comments.

I must confess I'm not well-versed in the works of Blake. Coleridge now, I love 'im, but he was one helluva cynic wasn't he?:
"The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman."

And to you, Hawkman, this is going to sound like a Golden Globes acceptance speech, w/o, thank goodness, some snarky comment by Ricky Gervais, thanks for the "Bump!" I'm grateful to you for providing the original poem for me to riff on, even though it took months.

Also thank you also for asking about the stanza form, (ahem) which in a way was also inspired by an allusion to "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." So I borrowed the stanza form from another work by the same poet:

http://www.online-literature.com/robert-browning/2772/

Oh, and incidentally, that "two ships passing in the
night" reference comes up from time to time in this
particular household, in which case it's the Andrea
Doria and the Stockholm.

To all three of you, thanks again!

An enjoyable piece, Aunty. There is some clever punning, including the title itself, and the broken-line form works well in reflecting the split in the relationship.

This Browning-inspired form (which I admit I didn't recognise) seems to have rubbed off on the diction and syntax, which is a bit on the archaic side for me (eg. 'whence'; 'fast she sped'; 'to honor ceremony’s threshold mete') perhaps needed to meet the demands of the rhyme scheme. And the zeugma seemed a bit showy: 'while holding both her head and fond hopes high'.

This clashes with the presence of more modern day words like 'babe', 'hubby' and the more 'matey' interjections ('and-I swear'; 'and so not shy') and makes the narrator sound on the whole a bit arch and aloof.

There are a few lines where the rhythm falls flat:

Quote:

---

he did sweep her, but then said of the room:

tightly wound itself ‘round her still youthful neck

---

but then perhaps these are excusable in what is after all a light-hearted piece.

Thanks for your comments, B/V and kudos to you for recognizing the attempt, if a bit overly-earnest, to include a zeugma, in which one word has the double-duty to refer to two others in the sentence.

It turns out that the line you cited "while holding both her head and fond hopes high" is a specialized type of zeugma, called a syllepsis in which only one of the objects agrees grammatically, or refers in a different sense, as in the famous from "The Rape of the Lock":
Doth sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.

Speaking of rhetorical pairings, recently on another's thread you mentioned hendiadys which refers to two words often coupled to make one meaning: "hue and cry," "life and limb," etc. "Kith and kin" is a hendiadys we don't see often these days, now referring to significant relationships among extended family and close friends. It originally meant a person's household -- family
and lifestock included.

Speaking of archaisms in the little ditty, they were deliberate for the very reason that you mentioned, as a homage to R.B. The modernisms, by contrast, were a nod to the modernity of my other source, Hawkman's original marriage (or anti-marriage) poem.

One more thing, while I have your ear. I searched "high and low" (another hendiadys) for the name of the kind of foot R.B. uses in his even-numbered lines, which consist of one unstressed syllable in the middle of two stressed syllables.

The answer (I think!) is that the foot is an amphimacer,* literally "long at both ends." Of course, we're not supposed to mix the quantitative verse of the Greeks up with the stressed syllables that form the basis of English prosody. Thus, amphimacer, sometimes called "cretic," is relatively rare in English verse, though there it is (I think) in "Love Among the Ruins" and in Blake's "Spring" as well:

Sound the flute.
Now it's mute.
Birds delight.
Day and night.

(Example courtesy of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms.)


{*Added 1/23/11:}
This line by yours fooly:
as Mother
is the opposite of amphimacer, an amphibrach, in which there is one stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables: x/x

Thanks again, for taking the time to weigh in with your expertise.

Clever, Auntie! You are good with a pun and a rhyme. Yours and Hawkman's poems make me think of that classic song by Meatloaf, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_YjM4V4fc

Yes, that is how old I am.

Auntie, a very clever and enjoyable read. I am curious if you started the poem in this form. It seems so appropriate I can't imagine it as effective another way.

Thank you q. and firefangled for your response to #214^^ ("2/14" --same as the date for St. Valentine's Day, a bit of unexpected irony.)
Now, for my next number:


‘Ax’ Not What Your Company Can Do For You

Man, how it hurts to have to be the one
to say, after much time spent on thought
and careful consideration, we've made
the choice to go in a different direction.

We say that after spending time and thought.
We understand how hard it is to hear.
Our choice to go in a different direction
should not for a moment mean you're to blame.

We understand how hard it is to hear
decisions which, alas, affect one’s life.
Don't for a moment think that you're to blame–
that topic never came up in our plan.

Decisions can, alas, affect a man’s life
from careful considerations we've made.
The topic that never came up in our plan
was how much it might hurt to be the one.

deleted by Jassy Melson

What an apropos poem for these days. Excellent pantoum, Auntie.