Auntie's Anti-Poems

[Delta40]

“Today’s Theme Will Be ‘What Being an American Means to Me’ “

God could have made me
beautiful or privileged or brilliant,
but instead He made me plain
and poor and just smart
enough to know what
I was missing. He also
made me American, right down
to the soft and gooey, genial core.

All of this comes with the territory
of the good ol’ U. S. of A.: rugged
and wild at bottom yet always refining,
redefining what is possible-- Hell!
Even the impossible is probable
in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

We believe, deep down in our spongy,
artery-hardened heart (of hearts) we can
eat anything we want and not get fat, can
own anything we want to have – We can!
because it is our God-given right,
our sacred right (as Americans.)

It means we have to Sacrifice.
We have to devote our entire lives
to the Heaven-sanctified quest--
that holy grueling grail-- to seek
through markets, within dim-
witted schemes, down between
fuzzy cushions of comfy couches
the Mean Green, the dough-
re-mi, the root of every
necessary evil. (We do this,
preferably, legally.)

When we're not upending
every rock, rifling every pocket
in the world for money, we're busy
seeking answers–
not any old answer, not necessarily
the right answer, but the answer
we happen to be seeking.
Not sure what it looks like,
or sounds like, or smells like,
we'll know we've found The Answer
when we find the one we like.

That’s my theme
on “What Being an American
Means to Me.” What’s
the hold-up with my gold
star and my “A”?



Here's the much more dignified and definitely less sarcastic
original.

The patriotism of Americans, even down to homemade deprecating poems such as this cannot diminish the heart of the light which much of the world wishes to snuff out (No offence intended) This piece makes me want to purchase at least four guns and give them to little children for Thanksgiving...very evocative Aunty. It reminds me a little of Aussie Disaster where I engage in stereotypes. http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=60100

[deryk]

"Selfish Steam" was appropriately scalding -rather than scolding. You've dispensed with what I thought were some rather aqueous abstractions, but meticulously melded with the properties of steam-works. Once the mold is complete, I'm left with feelings of an inverted faith, and the pains that follow. Reading this hurt, so given your subject, I'd say you've succeeded.

It's very interesting how airy this strikes me, and how lofty it is not; I feel as though the distance of the occasion from the objects of the poem is a bit stretched, but that could just be my semi-educated reading, in other words, I'm sure there are allusions I have missed. Either way, it is still an accomplishment.

[Hawkman]

Well Auntie, you unleash a Petrarchan sonnet on us but I can't help feeling the form rather obscures the message here.

"Contrary fact’s been banished from the frame
where good works have vanished (as in their dearth.)"

in particular I find awkward. The forced rhyme of dearth with the end rhyme birth in the next line, just feels out of place and tautologous. A dearth is an absence and you've already said vanished. It might have worked if you'd gone on to expand the point in the same sentance, but the full stop pulls it up short.

However, picking through it I detect that you satirise the myth of the self-made, where success may be counted in the number of times an individual may have been declared bankrupt or how the self image is tailored only to admission of success, regardless of those failures swept under the carpet.

I found this one rather heavy going though, but mainly, I think, this is down to the form imposed on it.

Cracking effort though, Auntie.

Live and be well - H

[Bar22do]

I don't understand your last very well, Auntie, but your previous, "American" one reminded me of G. Bernard Shaw's word: "An asylum for the sane would be empty in America." Hope you don't mind... now I'll read your last again and understand a little better perhaps.
Yours devoted
Bar

[AuntShecky]

Delta, I checked out your Aussie thing and placed a comment there. (Love ya!)

Thank you Bar for giving #271 a look, and thank you as well, Hawk.

To your conscientious comments I can only say that the piece came to me after reading the line in Rolling Stone, which forms the epigraph above the title. I'm guessing a couple of LitNutters are beside themselves over the fact that Old, Old, Old Auntie actually reads Rolling Stone.

Anyway, I'm thinking that juxtaposing self-esteem (exploiting the metapor of Rick Detorie's funny phrase "selfish steam") upon religious imagery might --"might" in craftier hands-- make a metaphysical poem. I see by the comments, though, that both conceits have been "yoked by violence" together.

I hate "'splainin'" as Desi used to make Lucy (on "I Love Lucy.") But I will attempt to 'splain the line about "good works." Some religions hold that faith alone is enough to "save" a person; others say you have to do "good works" as well as having faith. They've "vanished" then, because the person who has overweening faith in his own self doesn't bother doing any "good works." And since his inflated "selfish steam" has come without the benefit of corroborating evidence (or achievements to justify his inflated ego) there's a "dearth" of that meaning of "good work" as well.

What's ironic is that the line I'd thought you'd nail me on, Hawkman, was line 12 -- it has ten syllables, but all the stresses fall in the wrong place.(Fixed, 3/31/11.)

Thank you, everybody!

[AuntShecky]

For some reason not " 'splainable" to me, yours fooly keeps returning to the same theme, even in the anti-fiction. Cf. "The Worm"

Same with this next ditty, which is the opposite approach to the last anti-poem ( #270 in this thread.) Here, as they say, goes nothin':


Wrong on Schedule

I missed the bus. Loathing to wait
for the expected turtle rate,
I saw its fleeting, fuming tail.
In vain I waved, arms in full-flail.
Too soon it came, I came too late.

Called to re-set the doctor date.
No alibi could well relate
the silly, squalid, sorry tale:
“I missed the bus.”

More fuel for kinfolk to berate
ball-dropping, my consistent state.
Unsettling scores, they’re quick to rail
that ev’ry move I make, I fail.
The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

[everyadventure]

"Wrong on Schedule" was a great deal of head-shaking fun. I liked the fuming tail

In my family, I am dubbed the one who perpetually gets LOST. Sigh.

[blank|verse]

This is an enjoyable piece, Aunty, written with your trademark sense of humour, somewhat sly and knowing. And I'm probably going into too much detail for what is an essentially light-hearted piece, but…

It's interesting to see how form and content work in this one. The reader might expect things also to be 'wrong on schedule' but it's quite a tightly written piece. It has 15 lines, maybe instead of the expected 14, and the two short lines break the rhythm, but also act as a refrain which gives the poem structure and holds it together. In short, there is a lot more right with the form of the poem, than wrong - namely the full-rhymed, nicely crafted lines of iambic tetrameter. (Although 'More fuel for kin to berate' is one syllable short; and I think it would have been better to have just bitten the bullet and had 'every' instead of the archaic "ev'ry". I'm sure most people elide the word into two syllables anyway, and, apart from me, who's counting? ) Maybe this is telling us that poetry is where the poet feels she has the control lacking in life?

The elliptical, subject-less line 6 reads oddly in context and rather stops the poem in its tracks as the reader has to work it out. Another concession to the metre, perhaps? And while the metre gives the poem an attractive jauntiness, it does mean there are moments of inverted syntax, something about which never too keen am I. Eg. Why not just 'I waved in vain' instead of 'In vain I waved'; likewise, why not 'It came too soon' instead of 'Too soon it came'? As it is, of course, line 5 is an antistrophe, which is (that word again) an archaic rhetorical device. There is a tension between the archaic tone, language and syntax of the poem, and the 'failure' of the narrator to perform everday tasks, which produces a certain bathos and sympathy, and which is nicely encapsulated in the last two lines:

The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

[Bar22do]

I enjoyed this light poetic effort! Have found its form was perfect till our forums' expert B/V pointed out little irregularities that, nevertheless, seem to fulfill their purpose and work. I too was unprepared for archaisms, but the energy and disarming charm of this poem, as well as my unmentionable identification with its contents (ah ah - but I work on myself) have won me for its cause unconditionally! Thank you Auntie.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you Everyadventure,B/V, and Bar for your comments.

A note on the form, if I may. (I'll try not to be too verbose.)

I knew I had a refrain with the opening phrase, so that dictated the form, a rondeau. The formula for the rondeau is: (R+a)abba aabR aabaR.

That formula confused the bejeezus out of me, because the source said the rondeau consists of 13 lines, not 15. (Apparently the two lines repeating the refrain aren't counted in the 13.) So rather than maneuver through the proscribed formula, I resorted to copying the form from a pre-existing model, in this case a rondeau by the inexplicably ignored Austin Dobson. (As you can see, "You Bid Me Try" actually "does" what it says.)


The "wrong" in the title alludes, I guess, to the speaker, not the rondeau form. The first pronunciation for "fuel" in my antiquated print dictionary is for two syllables;the second pronunciation lists just one syllable as in "fyool," which is how most Americans pronounce it. (By the way, the word "fire" is just one syllable, but try as I can, it sounds like two when I try to say it.) The line is still has eight syllables, but still lacks a stress. Think I should put "my" in front of "kin"? (But that will make it nine syllables.)


Thanks again for your feedback.

[Hawkman]

Enjoyed this one too, Auntie. Over on this side of the pond though, it would be more common to say, "loth (loath) to wait, and I think it would have scanned better. Not sure I get the turtle reference either.

Live long and prosper - H

[Delta40]

What a delightful poem Wrong On Schedule is. I missed the bus is as good as the dog ate my homework!

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, Hawk and Delta for reading this and for your comments. Also, thanks to you both for cleaning the cobwebs and dust bunnies off my anti-fiction story, "The Worm."

I'll probably get stuck with royalty bills from the heirs of the Desilu estate, 'cause here I go with "'splaining" again:

I went with "loathing" as the present participle form of the verb, "loathe," syn. of "hate," which I didn't want to use in addition to the long "a" sound as one of the two rhymes.

Turtles traditionally go slowly, right? As opposed to
hares, racecars, SSTs. (Watch--the news tonight will probably report on a tortoise that can go from zero to 60 in 0.7 seconds.)

Altered the clanging rhythm of l. 9-- it could be 8 syllables if you don't break "fuel" into 2 syllables, 9 syllables if you do. (Either way, it makes me look like a dolt.)

And thank you as well, Delta. Even though the "dog ate my homework" line has become hackneyed, it didn't stop me from using it in a poem from April of Ought Eight. It may have been previously posted, I can't find the link; nevertheless, here 'tis:


Excuses, Excuses


Uh-- on a sleep-over I overslept.
The alarm forgot to bzzt
because the power went out
partying last night

and this a.m. it’s choking
on the short hairs
of the dog who bit it.

After eating the kids’
homework, the pup regurgitated
facts: 1066, the sum
of the hypotenuse, meiosis.

I missed my ride,
and it doesn't miss me.
The bus broke down
in tears because it came
down with a case of dys-Lexus-ia.

Me, I've got Venus
envy at the wrong time
of month, cramping
my style. My water broke

all over my dry Tortugas.
I had to stop to smell
the peonies. I left
my wallet in my other plants.

I cut you
a check that bounced
while it jogged to the mailbox.
It sprung a hammy
while tying the string
on its sweatpants.

At the orifice I already gave
a fig that flouted Newton’s Laws.
My pockets are philosophical
but not deep --

they're empty now
of their last seven-fifty,
donated to an orphan in need
of pouring a latté
into his Florida panhandle.

These quicksilver dollar
sprout wings, right?--
just like the ones suddenly
protruding from my back -–

I'd really, really,
really love to help you out,
Pal, but right now
I gotta fly.

[Jerrybaldy]

I loved your 'being an American' ... Didnt think you had it in you

[deryk]

Wrong on Schedule

I missed the bus. Loathing to wait
for the expected turtle rate,
I saw its fleeting, fuming tail.
In vain I waved, arms in full-flail.
Too soon it came, I came too late.

Called to re-set the doctor date.
No alibi could well relate
the silly, squalid, sorry tale:
“I missed the bus.”

More fuel for kinfolk to berate
ball-dropping, my consistent state.
Unsettling scores, they’re quick to rail
that ev’ry move I make, I fail.
The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

The continuity between subjects is really lovely, it has sort of a "slide-show" effect (with nicely self-contained lines)- which adds to the silliness. I confess the word "emblem" on the same line as "fate" had me searching for some grand parable. I think it's a nice illustration of the distance between failure and scapegoating. I didn't need to place the "grand parable" because this poem is the story of my life.