April 15--"A Kid Does His Homework"
Thank you, Paulclem, Hawk, and Prince.^^^
Below is the posting for April 15, for yesterday, when I knew I wouldn't have an opp. to use the computer. The snorer for today (April 16) is finished, and I'll post it this evening.
April 15
A Kid Does His Homework
(Translated from the original Martian by William McGonagall, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Martian Language and Literature at Downstate University at Hogwash.)
Our assignment was to report
on an aspect of our neighbor,
the one that’s one step closer
to the star we share.
My composition is about whatever it is
that almost covers that entire sphere.
It is a sickening color.
It is not red at all.
It is nothing like we have here.
Below a bunch of star-colored streaks
that follow the big ball while
it rotates and revolves, we see
the non-red thing wrinkling
the way our sand ripples in the wind.
When we get a closer look,
we see the expansive edge
rush back and forth
like it’s chasing itself.
If you put a small quantity
into a transparent vessel,
the color goes away.
If you put some in a flat container
and wait–
all of it goes away
(except for the mark it leaves behind,
a gray shadow, like a ghost.)
There are a few solid places
where this covering doesn’t reach.
But on those stony parts you’ll find
basins full and narrow lines of it
wriggling and cross-cutting rocks.
When you’re next to a border
and bravely stick an appendage in,
it feels strange, as if you want
to shrivel up and get yourself small,
as you do in night-time.
There’s a story about
how these aliens catch
some of it in little containers
which they keep by their sides
everywhere they go, like captured prisoners,
though from time to time
they tilt the contents out--
right into their maws!
I don’t believe this.
It makes me gag!
Also, it’s said that tiny, noisy
bits of it shoot down
from the tops of boxes
where the creatures stand erect.
They let these flashy meteors
fall directly on themselves.
They’re happy --
sometimes they sing –
as they caress and rub
these needles into their body-shells.
But when they move about their world
and the white streaks in their sky
meld into great clumps of dark gas
and begin to ooze the identical drops,
the earth-beings bolt in fear.
Sometimes they hold up parabolic shields
but mostly they run
as if they must avoid this stuff
or die.
They should do what our ancestors did
three million years ago
when they gathered up the putrid poison
and hid it all underground.
Mittfzlzl
(“The End”)
Martian Poetry
April 23 "The Groundling"
April 23
Tradition has ceremonially designated this feast day of England’s beloved patron saint as the birthday of William Shakespeare, whose actual day of birth is not decisively known. The speaker of today’s posting belongs to the ever-burgeoning group of humanity which throughout history has been forced to cling to society’s bottom rung. We could describe ourselves with this line : “On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.”
“I have heard that. . .creatures sitting at a play have been struck to the soul.”
The Groundling
A penny brought me noise and this scant space,
a pittance shy to make a costard mine,
I squat below the costly, lofty place
of gentle cushions puff’d for rich behinds.
My base and muddy view befits a pig.
There’s chance a sword-fight wets the boards with red,
or comic Kempe will stomp them with his jig.
What’s this? A ghost! – - sprung from his dirt-strewn bed.
That maiden looks just like the vintner’s son –
their shop’s along the rocky road to Ware.
Yet bolder wine no courtly cask could run
than vintaged words a lowly lad may share.
My ears soak up such sack and potent things,
the same as quaffed by noblemen and kings.
April 24--Auntie Gets Medieval on Your Donkeys
a thank you note appears directly above^^^^
April 24
Originating in France, the huitain consists of eight lines of eight (or ten) syllables. Generally, the rhyme scheme is ababbcbc. This stanza allegedly serves as the form for “The Monk’s Tale.” Personally I can’t vouch for that, because my copy of The Canterbury Tales includes only the prologue for that segment. Explaining that the tale itself is “monotonous,” the editor provides a brief summary of the tediously stultifying screed. Even the Monk’s fellow pilgrims complain about it in the next prologue: “namoore of this,” one says, for “youre tale anoyeth al this compaigne.” Indeed, the Monk is told that if it weren’t for the “clynking” of the “belles” adorning his horse’s bridele, the entire crowd would be taken as dead from the coma-like sleep induced by the boring tale, devoid as it is of “desport” and “game.”
Amid the devoutly religious center of the medieval world, the people living in that era did not focus on The Plague and Eternal Doom 24/7. They managed to find ways to leaven the ever-present pessimism with a little fun, a bit of “desport.” The following attempt at a huitain tries to imagine such a diversion with an annual tradition actually practiced in England into the
sixteenth century. Not unlike our modern-day charity fund-raisers, this custom engendered modest donations for the pastoral works of the local parish, while providing an opportunity for the participants to have a good time.
Hock Tuesday
Three Tuesdays past Easter, the town
in bright-bannered envelopes,
lets women in their festive gowns
chase men around with mocking ropes.
Each captive feigns despair and gropes
at bonds not truly tight nor tough,
by ransom freed–(or so he hopes.)
A tiny sum will be enough.
April 25 The Medieval Madness Continues
Thanks to all! ^^^
April 25
The medieval madness continues with two types of verse. The first form may or may not have originated with–but it certainly was perfected by-- the sadly anonymous author of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Hence, today’s posting attempts to emulate the “bob- and- wheel,” with a necessarily more modern sensibility, although yours truly is well aware that such an attempt may be foolhardy.
The Shepherd and the Stranger
In that short season when The Bull first bolts
to run The Ram off from the star-strung sky;
when silver shad have lately taken leave
of whirling whale-paths to swim salt-less streams;
and winter-waste’s abandoned for the trees
where cheerful songs are trilled by brighter birds,
the throbbing April tempo moved a boy
in certain tender, yet distracting, ways.
Though aimed toward tasks he ably could fulfill,
his wits were changed by whim-swept air to play
Through fancy’s wiles he willed himself a knight,
his shepherd’s crook, a lance for jousting feats;
forgetting the flock he was charged to watch
and so his trusted care he did
The sheep were thus bereft
of eyes that would attend.
His straying mind had left
them, for themselves to fend.
Meanwhile, not far away, across the lea
the sorrel tart, the clover sweet, and grass
remained unbent beneath near-weightless hooves,
as if the gentle horse were not quite there.
Like dew, the stately steed and rider seemed
to shimmer in the sun, though free from pride.
Their humility shone like martyrs’ faith,
as fulgurous as heaven’s sacred Cross
converting Rome. Some paladins felt such
a flash to change Jerusalem again,
yet one served more with softness than with might.
The horse, alert, stopped short. He’d stumble on
no rock; much less he’d stomp upon a lamb.
The knight swooped down to scoop it up
The sheep who’d strayed behind
he’d unite with its full band.
The careless keeper he’d find
to counsel, not to command.
The starling sound of a swift slash in the air
came from a sharp cut of the ersatz sword.
Unseen, a dragon fell, a damsel saved.
A snort from the horse made the boy jump round,
first frightened; then blushing, abashed,
caught in pretense, he faced the evidence
of guilt, bleating in the kind stranger’s arms.
“Return this poor thing to its ewe,” he said.
“The world God made is one we can enjoy;
but times we’re called to mind what’s here and real.
I’ve traveled far, young sire, to unknown lands,
but never a fierce dragon did I slay.
Though sheep must stay together with the fold,
apart from fable, Faith is best
A legend’s allegory
To truth our brains must leap.
So ends our story
Of a boy, a saint, and sheep.
Next we’re jumping into the twentieth century which saw the birth of a verse form totally different from the bob-and- wheel but not unlike the later inventions of the double dactyl and the McWhirtle forms of light verse. Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) came up with a quatrain consisting of two scansion-defying couplets whose completely irrelevant subject matter involves a famous person. Why the form was called a “clerihew” rather than an “Edmund” or a “Bentley” we’ll never know, but this one is not only irrelevant but irreverent about the person who stars in the previous bob-and-wheel:
George, England’s patron saint,
mentioned rarely, even there faint,
except for when actors revive
that stirring line in Henry V.
April 25 A last "curt" nod to Middle English prosody
Thank you, cogs and Prince ^^^
Today’s posting will offer a third --and final --form of the sonnet, a shortened version called “curtal.” But first, a word about its creator:
As we enter the home stretch, it’s high-time to mention the one of the most ground-breaking poets of the English language, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889.) The oldest of eight children in an upper class London family, Hopkins alienated himself from his kinfolk by converting to Catholicism, eventually becoming ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1877. He wrote most, if not all of his poems, before entering the order; because of this and the fact that he died of typhoid at the relatively-early age of 44, only three of his poems were published in his lifetime. It wasn’t until 1918 when the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges discovered the poems that they entered the literary world at large.
And oh, what a revelation they were, so much so that Hopkins has been called a modernist, initially surprising, since–-as Anthony Burgess reminds us-- he died the same year as Robert Browning did. James Joyce was only seven then, yet Hopkins completely transformed English poems. According to the introduction to the Hopkins section in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Hopkins sets “anguish and rapture against each other,” especially in his masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” a reaction to an actual historical event of 1875 racked with socio-political, religious, and –especially for Hopkins– profoundly spiritual personal significance. Conscious of the psychological tension which his work explores, Hopkins termed his unique sensibility as “inscape,” to express the vividness of an idea. He called the power to hold the elements of the inscape together “instress.”
“Inscape” and “instress” are progenitors of Joyce’s later “epiphanies.” In his short essay about Hopkins, Anthony Burgess tells us that Joyce unwittingly inherited the Hopkins superbly off-beat take on language, both creating a sparkling new vocabulary. Hopkins coins us fresh expressions, such as “beechbole,” “churlsgrace,” and “firefolk”-- stars. He was influenced by classical prosody, Welsh poetry, but especially Middle English verse forms, as in Piers Plowman. Rather than reiterating the iambic pentameter prevalent in the majority great English poetry, Hopkins preferred adapting the language to the natural rhythm of speech, without prescribed formulas about the quantity of stresses and slavish devotion to their locations. Burgess adds: “The English language had allowed itself to be shackled into a verse system borrowed from the Latin languages which don’t go in for the hammer blows of the native Saxon.”
In the position of having to invent something to fulfill a need, Hopkins created “sprung rhythm” –a liberated way of writing verse while simultaneously appealing to a musical ear. Like early English poems, the lines of verse are accentual, not metrical. Count the stresses, not the syllables:
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim
Another quality Hopkins shares with Old English and Middle English verse, is that the newly-coined words are constructed as compounds, with or without hypens. Even more important is the use of alliteration, both for sound effect and to balance the stresses in the line:
Fresh-firecool chestnut falls, finches’ songs
Hopkins employs sprung rhythm predominates his works as well in the new verse form he invented: the curtal sonnet. As the name connotes, it’s three and a half lines shorter than its Petrarchan and Elizabethan ancestors. Not only that, the lines are not metrical but accented and alliterative in which the number of stresses count and the number of unstressed syllables may vary. The rhyme scheme is abcabc dbcd and c (for the half-line)
And without further explanation, here’s yours fooly feeble attempt at imitating the curtal sonnet, vaguely modeled after “Pied Beauty,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
April 25
Words in Bloom
April’s first language is flourish-full, fine.
The wake-robin* greets the merry-bells’ glee;
From the pitcher plant eloquence leaks.
Up a Jacob’s ladder word-wisdom climbs,
a friendly chat tames a rue-d anemone,
while prolix pansies prate on and on for weeks.
Crinkle-roots smooth out; Jack in his pulpit swoons;
foam-flowers spew truth, the phlox springs free.
The jewelweed boasts vibrance, the violet peeks;
the blood-root moans; the honeysuckle croons–
* regional name for the trillium
April 27 Exhilarating Nonsense
I'll do my own thanking, thank you. So thank you, Jack of Hearts and Cogs.
April 27
Exhilarating Nonsense
If you’re anything like yours fooly and find that you never get to go out and have any fun, allow me to offer a suggestion. The next time you find yourself in a melancholy mood, try lifting your spirits with a healthy dose of Lewis Carroll. No, I don’t mean the two classic Alice books. I mean Sylvie and Bruno. You can read it right here on the LitNet.
Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), considered Sylvie and Bruno to be his masterpiece. Never mind Northrop Frye’s opinion that a writer is a poor judge of the value of his own work– in this case, Dodgson may have been right. I know I didn’t laugh aloud at Alice in Wonderland nor its sequel, but this one had me chuckling, chortling, giggling, roaring, and all other adjective describing a response to comedy.
An online treatise about the book subjects this tour de force to the painful treatment of deconstructionism: while making a couple of good points, the article all but ignores the overall hilarity. I found Sylvie and Bruno to be a linguistic romp, free-wheeling, disjointed, and digressive as Tristram Shandy, while subtly concealing slyly insidious observations about politics, urban and country society, and religion. Philosophy, especially Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism, falls prey to the satiric treatment; the author, who had already earned great esteem for his scholarship, even pokes fun at his own field of mathematics. Once again I greatly regret that decades ago I never paid attention in math class; if nothing else, it would have allowed me to “get” more of the mathematical jokes. But it’s not all set in the humdrum workaday world; several madcap scenes occur in a topsy-turvy fairy land.
The unnamed narrator, smart and at times densely naive, presents the title characters, a delightful couple of children – or are they? The little girl, capable of charming the bejeezus out of everyone with whom she comes in contact, is sensitive and sweetly-sentimental, yet witty enough not to be cloying, as Oscar Wilde famously found Little Nell. Her brother, Bruno, who goes to great lengths to avoid doing schoolwork, is a major source of pratfalls and unintentional bon mots, his verbal humor delivered with a slight speech impediment.
Other characters include a pair of brothers who are mid-level government officials, one of whom attempts to finagle himself into becoming emperor. Throw in a couple of addle-brained professors, a commitment-shy bachelor doctor and his supposed lady love--a couple whom the author employs to mock the romances common in Victorian novels as well as its implausible conventions (such as the narrator suddenly having to rush out of town “on business,” not to return for a month.) A number of minor characters round out the cast, notably the fat, spoiled “Uggug,” a name with which few, if any, of Dodgson’s young readers would have experienced the shock of recognition, let alone the embarrassment of identification. Similarly, there is a brief appearance by a pompous ambassador announced as “His Adiposity, the Baron Dopplegeist.” The book abounds with one-liners as funny as you’ve ever heard in a Marx Brothers movie.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, I could go on and on rhapsodizing about how I enjoyed the book, but I do remember this is a poetry thread, and we’ll get right to it. But first–an explanation of the specific inspiration for today’s posting. In the first half of the narrative, songs from the “crazy gardener” intermittently pop up with exhilarating nonsense. One of the gardener’s ditties goes like this:
He thought he saw a rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek;
He looked again and found it was
The middle of next week.
“The one thing I regret,” he said,
“Is that it cannot speak.”
Thus, the inspiration for today’s postings, not nearly as funny nor impeccably metrical as the crazy’s gardener's songs. Here we go:
He thought he saw new luggage
with handles and matching locks.
He looked again and found it was
a croc with monkeypox.
“Next trip,” he said, “I’ll have to use
a trash bag and a box.”
---------
He thought he saw a large dragon
lashing a damsel to a rack.
He looked again and found it was
a tattoo on her back.
He tried to help her out, until
his laser jumped the track.
- - - - - - -
He thought he saw a topless bar,
lascivious and uncouth.
He looked again and found it was
a place without a roof.
When it rains, the joint provides
an umbrella for each booth.
April 28 From Bad to Verse
April 28
As this thread comes down to the wire, I still have a short list of poetic forms which haven’t yet made an appearance in “30/30.” I’ll save the list and attempt to explore them at a later date in the “anti-poetry” thread. Today I’m returning to the type of verse which Robert Frost likened to “playing tennis without a net,” although yours fooly has never been able to wield a tennis racket, with or without one. Writing competent netless verse, however isn’t exactly a matter of phoning it. In a way it’s just as difficult to execute as using an established form, because the writer has to come up with a unique structure for that particular piece.
Perhaps that’s the reason there have been relatively few, truly “netless” poems in this thread, namely April 3, April 5, and April 10. On April 12, the net was hiding way up in Iceland. But back here today is another piece of netless verse, also known as “free,” with absolutely no cost to you.
The source of this next number is an online ad consisteing of just a single line asking the Freudian question, “What do rabbits want?”
What Do Rabbits Want?
We want a comfortable patch
of turf that’s nettle-and-burdock free
where we can lie on our furry backs
and lounge for hours at a stretch.
We want that show-off hawk,
cruising above us in the threatening sky,
to spin his fancy spirals somewhere else.
And we want that sneaky fox,
that foul-smelling coyote, and that
vicious pit bull down on Elm Street
to leave us the hell alone.
We want our digs
to stay dry. Now
and then we don’t mind
a freshening shower,
but you can’t imagine
how depressed an otherwise
well-adjusted young rabbit
can get when a suburban
septic tank overflows.
On a balmy moonlit evening
we want to come our and arrange
ourselves in a leporine ring
and hop the night away,
but most of all we want
to pitch a bit of woo, make
a lot of whoopie, and produce
more
and more
and more
rabbits.
PS-- A similar subject had been masterfully treated by a "real" poet, Philip Larkin, whose name has been "haunting" the LitNet in recent days. The title of that poem is ""Myxomatosis."
PPS I've been having a devil of a time connecting to the Web this day. Just my luck!-- with just two more of these things to go. I will try to log back on when the April 29 thingie is ready for posting, but if it should be noticeably absent tomorrow, I will try to finish up this thing on Monday if the connection problems cure themselves. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for all of your support this month.
Auntie
April 29-30 From Bed to Worse
At last we come to the next-to-closing spot with a verse form called an epyllion, a miniature epic poem. The epyllion is a narrative poem, metrical but unlike its massive big brothers, it is much less lengthy. Often full of discursive sidetracks and mythological allusions, the main topic is romantic, in our modern sense of the word–“erotic,” if you will (which I’m sure many of you do.) The best known epyllia in English are Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Shakespeare’s take on Ovidian myth evokes the Elizabethan society in which he lived and wrote but especially displays his signature gift for figurative language, wit and unprecedented insight into human emotion. His poem notoriously focuses upon the horniest woman in English literature, Lady Chatterley notwithstanding. The object of Venus’s affection, a hot-looking young dude named Adonis is just the opposite: annoyingly prudish, self-righteous, and more than a little impressed with his own awesomeness. A little of Adonis goes a long, long way, but he’s not the kind of “bore” that is the crucial factor in this love affair. Their pastoral seduction scene is just shy of going over the top in its passionate expression and explicit depiction of the lady’s desire, not to mention a vignette about a stallion and a mare doing– as the kids say– “the nasty.”
Published in 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare’s first major effort establishing his poetic reputation. Some of his contemporaries considered the poem “improper;” despite that fact or maybe because of it, it went through nine printings. The subject and the expression are tame by modern audiences inured to salty language and full-frontal nudity on pay cable tv.
The sesta rima stanza with an ababcc rhyme scheme carries the soubriquet, “Venus and Adonis stanza.” The following posting is a feeble attempt at a epyllion, which through ignorance avoids allusions and maintains our modern idiom. Every effort was made to steer clear of anachronisms, but if any pop up, like the proverbial wristwatch on a Roman soldier in a movie, please inform me. Not only that, this 2012 piece is a lot less hot than the original. (Sorry.) There are, however, imbedded references, direct, and indirect quotes from Shakespeare’s writing in his career that did not begin until some eleven years after this imagined episode. Within the few facts known about his life, official documents still extant establish that his wife was eight years older than he. That fact, coupled with Venus as seductress , makes it seem almost counter-intuitive not to portray the male character in this piece as the reluctant conquest. Instead it takes the more or less conventional view, with the male as pursuer, though in life the result often lies somewhere in between. So in a way yours fooly is not only inspired by Shakespeare but also Irving Berlin: “A man chases a girl until she catches him.”
April 29
Love in the Woods
Some overgrown weeds on the river path
bent to angry steps of an employee.
But Nature was not the source of his wrath
for loose from the shop, he was not quite free.
From commerce into the wild he’d been hurled,
full of briers is this working day world
He passed two swans, immaculate, too proud
to note the muddy stream, the sluggish flow.
Any lumbering goose plucked from the crowd
could grab the fowl mid-wade and bring them low.
A burly hand, tough armour ‘gainst the peck,
with one swift twist could break a slender neck.
Here he’d been sent to do what he’d been told:
to check on conies, also gulled and caught.
Less tame, this hunter was eighteen years old;
for greatness he was born, he gamely thought.
When hope thus suppurates, a trap enjoins
a man to bonds of mind and heart and loins.
His salad days arose with wants, not needs.
In youth bright dawn won’t sleep with darkest fears.
Like lilies festering among the weeds
raw goals run rampant through the greenest years.
Yet vines will try to bolt and vault the ground
‘til tender, earthy tendrils keep them bound.
Unrapt in his task, still he searched each snare
he’d set for pelts which wrapped the ordered flesh;
to seek out other prey did not prepare
for rare sites woven in the forest’s mesh.
Not primed for sights less common than a hare,
his eyes first missed the hidden creature there.
Part dappled in the sun, part in the shade,
a lass remembered her mother said
to fetch some rosemary for a stew she’d made.
Her dutiful daughter would cull the sylvan bed.
The figure snatched the swain’s distinctive eye.
For a few moments more he stood to spy.
He recognized her-- Master Hathweys’ girl
whose strange wander to the woods that day
discovered sweetly. Like the tribesman’s pearl,
he hold a while, then softly throw away.
To salvage the hour its charm worn thin,
he’d try to charm her, not to woo nor win.
He ventured closer to the shadowed glade
to greet her gently with his voice of silk,
though faintly she could smell the butcher’s blade,
also a vague trace of a mother’s milk.
Conversing as a couple anywhere,
in no time both forgot both herb and hare.
Then, asking about her family’s lot,
and signing, his own spelling much the same:
at times the alpha’s shown and sometimes not.
With weighty words writ down, what’s in a name?
He was no bumpkin, this he’d let her know,
to make the buds of her esteem to grown.
He bragged how he’d been to London town
where he’d seen Euphues and St. Paul’s boys,
and had felt the pull of the cap and gown;
how he’d tamed mad steeds like children’s toys.
No mention of the jobs not among his loves–
of cutting meat and cutting rich men’s gloves.
Perched upon the friend of his father’s knee,
he’d heard fine learning, verse, and Latin lore.
He told her of his hunger for the sea
which gains advantage on this kingdom’s shore.
In turn she told him nothing of herself;
she listened, as volumes speak upon a shelf.
But drenching rains near filled her barren well
with thoughts that would bring drought to moister maids:
cold death–then leading brutish apes in hell,
the wasted wombs of women in parades.
Yet marching in a spinster’s sense-souled shoes,
she knew this youth would not be hers to choose.
Still–if in faith he felt that love is blind
and fails to mind the wide gap ‘tween their years,
against conventions’s tide he’d wall his mind
and let her waves wash over his frank fears.
Her overripe wish came perhaps too soon,
while dallied discourse ate the afternoon.
As the sun prepared to take to his bed,
and lovers meet to consummate their plans,
he saw up close her eyes and noble head,
and sipped the creamy skin upon her hands.
Then not too roughly seized her by the wrist.
Not frightened she did not fight nor resist.
On mossy bed they hadn’t planned to lie,
nor Venus’s chariot meant to ride,
yet both in thrall to one another’s sigh:
impromptu groom and most unwitting bride.
That tavern wench with her ill-fitting love
matched not this snugness, like his father’s glove.
Postscript signs in her middle swelled before
belated banns sealed fate, perhaps one heart.
A babe soon born; then twins a quick year more,
a wife at home, another one in art.
Two loves wrought in ebb and flowing stages
That brought to life immortal light for ages.
And finally, we’re going to shut this thing down with a limerick:
April 30
30/30
A LitNutter in a strange kind of haze
entered an oddly deranged sort of phase.
She called herself “Auntie”
and her wit proved quite scanty,
writing verse for a full thirty days.
And that’s a wrap!
