Auntie's Anti-Poems

[Hawkman]

Ah say, ah say, Lord ha'mercy theyer, Auntie. y'all gone blusey on our donkey!

Well ah woke up this mornin'
an' Auntie's poem caught my eye!
Ah say ah woke up this mornin'
an' ah saw Auntie's poem stridin' by.
an' if you don' wan' poems in the mornin'
then don' you bother openin' your eyes!

Oh yeah!

Now ah see people in the mornin'
an' they is on to somethin' good.
Yeah, ah see people in the mornin'
an they is doin' what they should;
they soak up culture in the mornin'
from Muddy Auntie's neighbourhood!

Lay it on me, brothers and sisters of the forum...

See y'all, H

[blank|verse]

I don't know which I enjoyed more - your original, Aunty, or Hawk's rather cheeky pastiche!

[AuntShecky]

Re: #240^^ Thank you, Hawk for the "sincerest form of flattery," and thank you Blank_Verse for liking them both.

Next up:


My Cousin’s Still Single

The men she likes
like voluptuous women,
women with convex lines coursing,
like fertile rivers swollen with warm
mineral-milk from the mountains
flowing down to sweeten the sea.

They like their gurgling voices
giddily chirping like guileless birds,
yet smart enough to accommodate
whims with cheerful compliance.

The men who like her
like little in particular–ready to pop
on an available train
snaking toward any place at all,
the uniqueness of some town
left beside the rail.

The lot leave behind a track
of fruitless Saturday nights
with a novel, a cat, nervous
notions of extinction and ennui,
and the sharp mockery
of a clock’s constant clicks.

[Hawkman]

Well Auntie, the first three lines open the poem with such a strong rhythm I was kind of disappointed when it was dropped. I felt in the unrhymed quatrain of the second stanza the alliteration was a bit too much. The use of the device elswhere in the poem seems less prominent. Maybe it's just the G sound with fewer lines in the stanza making it seem more concentrated.

In the last stanza I'm not convinced by nervous notions on ennui - (can one be nervously bored?) though I accept it in connection with extinction - lol.

There are some great images though, I love:

"fertile rivers swollen with warm
mineral-milk from the mountains"
&
"the sharp mockery
of a clock’s constant clicks."

I also enjoyed the opening three lines and as I said, I would have liked to see the rhythm expanded throughout the poem, or at least recurring occasionally.

Unususally for your work, my subjective opinion is that maybe this one could benifit from a little revision. Perhaps you too are suffering from the creative malaise which I seem to be feeling... Or then again it could just be my failing that I can't appreciate this one properly.

Live and be well - H

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is a marvel and a mystery! There's such richness in the inventions - although they come so effortlessly, it seems, that they should maybe not be called "inventions" and the fun you quite obviously had writing this, hurrying, perhaps, to keep up with your fertile, effervescent mind!

[MyBoy]

i disagreee

[PrinceMyshkin]

i disagreee

This is in keeping with the only two other responses you've made to other threads. To help you develop a vocabulary, I offer the word "because" to follow "I disagree".

[firefangled]

Zilch, Nada, Bupkes*, Zilch I enjoyed very much. It reminded me of 'ol Foghorn Leghorn, I thought the absence of a word in places was very effective.

My Cousin’s Still Single Interesting how N describes her through a man's eyes as if to show this is how she defined herself. She is not an individual, but one of a class of women whose features are reduced to geometry and similies.

This created a distance that persists down to the description of the towns, the trains to anywhere and the odd things left behind. And in the end we are left, like the cousin, in an empty room with the ticking of a clock.

The inventiveness of language is counter-point to what it is portraying, as if to show how facade operates. What a treat for the reader!

[everyadventure]

My Cousin's Still Single seemed to start out so hopefully: here she's found a woman who can appreciate her curves, who can love her for who she is... but then it turns out she draws the wrong type of men after all.

And yes, one can definitely be nervously bored. A sort of restless agitation is easy to envision in this scenario.

Nicely done, Aunt!

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, Hawk, firefangled, Prince, and everyadventure for your comments.
I don't know, Hawk, you may be right about the structure. I knew I wanted to try free verse, but without formal meter, we need substitutes. Hence, an attempt to be conscientious about the line breaks and the parallel imagery. The alliteration was absolutely deliberate, as I was going for really hard consonants, "c" and "k," for
instance.

the nervous notions of extinction (mostly personal extinction but also the species) and ennui (more rarefied than mere boredom -- more like Kierkegaard's "the sickness under death."

My Cousin's Still Single seemed to start out so hopefully: here she's found a woman who can appreciate her curves, who can love her for who she is... but then it turns out she draws the wrong type of men after all.

And yes, one can definitely be nervously bored. A sort of restless agitation is easy to envision in this scenario.

Nicely done, Aunt!

Thanks, everyadventure, but uh, the first stanza/strophe/section was not intended to describe the subject but instead was a reference to the physical attributes of the subject's rivals.

Uh-oh, misunderstood again (similar to lines 7-8 in #228)intended to be about searching around for a job, any job which readers took to be "telemarketing."

All of this tells me that there might be something wrong with my choice of expression, maybe I'm too much in love with subtlety.

[Jerrybaldy]

Hello Auntie. I would like to know more about you. TBH I feel unqualified to crtique your poems, you are in a neighbouring field and I am just peering over the hedgerow asking who are you ?

[deryk]

These are amazing. I too feel unqualified to offer a critique, because they are so very obviously out my league to respond to. Maybe some day!

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for the comments re: #243


Ol’ MacDonald

Though the pickings weren't all that slimy
half a century ago, with rare
perspicacity you saw
the creep of the collective brow
inching southward, shifting down.

Still, it wasn't at all difficult to see
quite fairly how the great
were bullied by the middling,
as if Gresham’s Law diversified
from the deeply rooted realm
of money into the less-worldly world,

not so much driving genius
away as elevating the average
to excellent, squeezing in a place
for non-threatening, lackluster
children at the grownup table.

Out of the wheat-covered prairies
straight-up novels reaped praise
from Bible-leaning folks -- leaving
gospels from an author’s youth
abandoned on the shore
for some old man and a fish;

believing songs of a chirping lass
as classy as Pygmalion, worshiping
warmth in Rockwell’s secular
apotheosis of the illustrated town;
ennobling Grant Wood’s
barnyard, Wyeth’s emotive hill.

You must take cold-eyed comfort
in the fact you no longer dwell
where the best is worse
than merely an “enemy of the
good” (as Voltaire said),
but deemed complex
and thus dismissed.

Consider yourself kissed
by Fortune, sparing you
from sitting through
a Disney-fied Aida,
amid a wasteland overrun
with cats, or the Bard
relieved of his depth
by the magic of 3-D,
or Leonardo chiefly
credited with creating a code,
prosaic prose mistaken for poetry--
proudly presented by, brought
to you by –well, take my word
you're lucky to have missed it
(wherever you may be.)

Here, “Elitist,” would label you,
as damnable as lice--
though a pretty neat trick
for an individualistic anarchist,
the kind of earthy egalitarian
who could level with a guy!
You'd never find present-day comrades,
their cognate to your Pinot, a vin ordinaire;
they depend on languid liquor to rebut
but--unlike Trotsky--without a shot of humor.

Every day we're “challenged”
(as it’s said) to uncover thinkers
who are unafraid to think,
and we hear fewer
and fewer wags whose shtick
is too hip for the room.
Why do I have this unshakable
suspicion that you may have been
The Last Man on Earth
who could get the joke?

[Delta40]

Omg! I'm one of the dumb ones here. I really would be the last person on earth to get it Aunty! I guess you don't watch mindless sitcoms either....(praise be to you!)

[deryk]

Typo on line 54. Egalitarianism as an opposition to self-critical improvement is the most relevant subject in modern writing, I think (I know 'relevant' is such a dirty word, consider me vulgar).

The allusions were delightful. I laughed while I read it. I'm sure I'll cry later on.