Finals Frustrations

O! such stripes we thrash upon ourselves
scourging on superiority,
or, as the case may be, I swear:
to but maintain mere mediocrity.

*

No, that's not really the title of the "poem" up there (and  those of you familiar with law school exams will understand this a little better than all the other students out there).  That it's only a "poem," I think, excuses it from my otherwise ordinary disdain for "untitled."  And besides, does this really even qualify as a poem?  Certainly less so than the little ditty I wrote about pens,which I actually thought was pretty clever, by the way, but which, if anyone actually read, apparently no one got.  Anyway, I thought this was kind of clever, too.  I "wrote" it while walking to campus to finish studying for my final 2L exam last week.

A New Bookmash, from Sentence First

I don't know if Stan Carey came up with the idea of the "bookmash," but I picked it up from him, and think it's a pretty great source of accidental or chance poetry.  Of course, the accidental/chance nature of stuff like this "poetry" (not always so great for its actual artistic value) must be taken with a grain of salt, because, indeed, it's pretty friggin' easy for the discoverer (or, as it were, author/poet) to arrange the titles or labels in whatever way works best--or least badly.  What I think is truly great about this kind of art, however, is first that the photographer (an attribution more appropriate, perhaps, than artist or poet) has to make do with the phrases available to him, and better, second, that there is, to those familiar with the source materials, immediately implicated meaning and connotation built into the poem by the authors of the works whose titles form the lines of the poem.  Cool!

Anyway, Mr. Carey posted a new one on his blog, "Sentence First," today, and I think it's my new favorite:

-- and arranged by Mr. Carey thusly:

Black Hole, the long falling

Darkness peering, portable darkness --

Tidal dreams, grotesque dreams,

The holy door on Green Dolphin street.

This Wretched Store Does not Carry My Favorite Pen in My Favorite Color

*

It's either
blue or red; or
the lesser or the better pen.

I chose by pen,
forewent the red, for
the better of the lesser bens.

*

Composed while walking back to the library from the university bookstore.

This pen represents the first I’ve bought for my personal use in over ten years that is not red.

Sunday Poetry LI -- "An Arboreal Fairtytale," by UGn X

There are few pieces of writing—very few—that I’ve both produced myself and of which I’m particularly proud.  This is one of them, and I expect that no one will ever really get it.  And that’s just fine (and that’s no commentary on your certainly shrewd aptitude for poetry interpretation, but commentary on my own poetics).  There’s an awful lot of truth to the notion that poets (dare I qualify myself as one of them? —maybe “artist” is safer, less specific, right?) write as much for themselves as anyone else, if not entirely for themselves and no one else.  I can’t say that that’s entirely the case here, as this is one of many poems I wrote for a novel I’m featuring over on one of my other blogs (and, you may have already noticed, I’m leaving in place the attributive eponym for the “actual” angst-ridden composer, Eugene Cross (get it??)).  It’s also, like I said, one of my very favorite poems.  It was tremendously fun to write—to piece together, really—and, apart from acknowledging off some of my favorite artists and themes, plays to all the stuff I love best about my poetry—or, at least, about my favorite poems.  Is it successful?  Yeah.  Very.  After all, I wrote it for myself (well, and for Eugene Cross), and I love it!  Of course, that begs the question, then, Why am I bothering to put it here, particularly out of the context of its novel home?  Because I’ve got nothing else I want to share for Sunday Poetry today, and I’ve always wanted this one to be more out there than, well, you know, just being “out there.”

So here it is.  I welcome, as always, you thoughts, whatever they happen to be. 

An Arboreal Fairytale and Moral in Three and a Half Stanzas

On a Caravaggio plateau, under

               black and red skies: desolate and shadowed;

               naked, exposed, the stunted stem, naught but

               an arthritic claw, clutches dark feathers;

vibrant Rackham verdure—slight, sketchy, lush—

               unwittingly hosts the agonized stick:

               cowering ill-confidence, faithless and

               grasping, desperate in its green innocence;

Remedios Varo woods are sharp and

               thick and heavy under a sky swirling

               with physics.  Thin, difficult; stretch! just not

               sufficient in the great grand majestic;

               a Basho workbench

               supports the potted leaf tree:

elegant

for its crooks and folds.

—UGn X

Sunday Poetry XXXVII -- ISAAC WATTS . Yes, THAT Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts

I am not a fan of Isaac Watts, the English hymn-writer.  If you take a few minutes and learn a bit about him, it comes as no little mystery that Lewis Carroll so enjoyed lampooning him; aside from the terribly condescending didactic nature of Watts' writing--at least that of the stuff Carroll reported that Alice was forced to memorize for lessons--he seems to have no small amount in common with Carroll: both wordsmiths, both theologians, but logicians.  Generally I don't--okay, I've never--defended the older, stuffier of the two, until just last Sunday, when in church (a meeting, nonetheless, in which I'd been invited to speak) we sang a hymn of his (I'd never realized any of his words were even in our hymnal! and how lousy of me: now that I look, it appears he penned lyrics for ten hymns in our book!) and, apart from a sharp, nearly parallel correspondence with the particulars of my subject, I really enjoyed the hymn.  The problem is that I still don't like Isaac Watts, and, if I'm being honest with myself, I must admit that if I'd encountered this hymn outside the context of church, and particularly the combination of the thoughtfulness of my spiritual "place" that day and the beauty of the music, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have liked it at all.  Funny the effect and influence the reader (and I'm leaving out the debate over the contribution of music) brings to a poem.


Come, We That Love the Lord
Isaac Watts
Come, we that love the Lord,
And let our joys be known.
Join in a song with sweet accord,
And worship at his throne.


Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God,
But servants of the heav'nly King
May speak their joys abroad.


The God who rules on high
And all the earth surveys--
Who rides upon the stormy sky
And calms the roaring seas--


This mighty God is ours,
Our Father and our Love.
He will send down his heav'nly pow'rs
To carry us above.

Sunday Poetry XXXIV: POEMHUNTER

I'm stealing (or steeling--either works here, I think) a minute or two away from my inlaws to post up some poetry.  Unfortunately, all my typical resources are packed in an ABF truck waiting to be picked up tomorrow.  That considered, I thought I'd try online what I've been doing recently with textbooks--that is choose a basic categorization of poetry and select to share a few that I'm not familiar with.  My category?  "Poem."  I typed it into Google.

Here's the website that pops up first:  http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/

I'm familiar enough with Poemhunter, as they often provide texts that I can copy and paste rather than me having to plink out the whole poem by hand (though, I've found, the latter is sometimes more reliable for accuracy).  What I didn't know about them, as I've never casually surfed its content, is that it also publishes user-submitted poetry.  Here's the first one available--top of the list:

An Ode to Dr Hitesh Sheth

Sidi J. Mahtrow

Once came into view
A man of tallents, not a few
For he wrote as others might
That human experiece is a given right
A right to see the world in a different way
Not as one would like it to be or to endless stay
For Dr Hitesh Sheth (no period after the Dr) as he chooses
So as not to be confused with those blue noses
That study the lint in their navel
Before exclaming, it’s a dark hole of which I alone can marvel.
For Dr Sheth has been there before
And knows Medical facts (and more) 
Which he places into rhyme in an easy way
As if to say, 
“Diogenes and I strive to teach
On the tree of life, the low hanging fruit is in easy reach.”

s 

May I just say in brief comment: "sic".

From there and on to their list--top 25/500--of "top" poems (which I guess means these are the poems most searched from their extensive database), here are two poems with which I'm unfamiliar:

On the Ning Nang Nong

Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong 
Where the Cows go Bong! 
and the monkeys all say BOO! 
There's a Nong Nang Ning 
Where the trees go Ping! 
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo. 
On the Nong Ning Nang 
All the mice go Clang 
And you just can't catch 'em when they do! 
So its Ning Nang Nong 
Cows go Bong! 
Nong Nang Ning 
Trees go ping 
Nong Ning Nang 
The mice go Clang 
What a noisy place to belong 
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!! 

Warning

Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana XIV -- chapter 13: OF DEVILS AND MASONS

While this is my favorite chapter of the book so far, so it contains one of my favorite comparison: that of tapeworms and gall stones to bad poetry, and all its pathetic symptoms and affectations.  Here, though, we have to examine Eco's use of, what he considers as its his own, bad poetry.  The creation and strategic use of intentionally bad poetry is like the now-commonly mentioned (Michael Chabon) generation of intentional coincidences.  A wise student once commented hopefully and pointedly on the poetry I confessed I was writing for a then-current novel.  "I hope you're not trying to write intentionally bad poetry to make it look like a teenager did it," she said.  I admitted that indeed I was not and so assured her with a sincere expression of my insecurity as a poet, (more or less:) "I'm hoping the best poetry I can do can qualify as believably excellent or even just believable teen-poetry."  So I wonder how Eco, certainly an excellent writer, but not necessarily a poet (and so he sagely acknowledges in the end of the chapter in reference to another's poem, "This is beautiful because it is not mine"), approached his poetry attempts, or, as I suspect is the case as with other issues/references in the book, these are autobiographically accurate, and indeed pieces he composed as a precocious teen--that and, well, the poems' apparent and beyond-coincidentally prophetic natures for Yambo's unique future.  For example, bad poetry or not, this is quite telling:

you cannot enter twice

the kingdom of remembrance

and hope to find unspoiled

the unexpected freshness

of the first theft.

1. The poem of "three days before Christmas" interests me, as in subject (a purity in stark contrast to what we know of the adult Yambo) and prediction (the loss of memory) it is particularly prophetic, appropriate (even mysteriously coincidentally so, as already mentioned above), and perhaps directly metaphoric.  It may even offer a potential explanation for why the memory was lost in the first place (accurate as prediction or not, I don't remember).  Thoughts?
2. As there are literal rooms of memory in the house that align with Yambo's segmented memories of his past, all of which are natural divisions--segmentations--of life, and with a particularly sturdy and tall wall set ("to put a final seal on memories I was renouncing") between adolescence and young adulthood, high school and college, so his literal loss of memory builds a wall (even a "satanically masonic" wall) between his present and past.  Sounds like a classic, though thoroughly exaggerated, mid-life crisis.
3. Lila Saba: "saba" is the food for bacteria that create balsamic vinegar.  Consider the various classic metaphors of vinegar, not to mention grapes, as well as the definition of balsam against the mellifluous connection between Lila Saba and Sibilla (additional, of course, to the fact that Lila is a nickname for Sibilla anyway).
4. An affecting little book: "La Vita Nuova."  Beatrice penetrated all sorts of walls that otherwise held everyone else back in Dante's life; so similar to this Lila who is the only one, besides Gianni, who transcends all of Yambo's barriers, consciously and subconsciously--the "relay race across the years."

Wednesday's for Kids XVII -- A IS FOR ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY SCARRY

Alphabet books are a dime a dozen--at least if you can find the crappy ones in the remainder bins at the back of your local Barnes and Noble or thrift store.  Sure, there are some really good ones out there, and I don't devalue their ability to assist an otherwise stubborn toddler's interest in learning the alphabet, but why let someone else do what your kids can already do better?  My favorite alphabet book isn't really an alphabet book at all, but a word book, the Best Word Book Ever in fact (whose vain title reminds a little of Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and whose content is, in its own sphere, equally staggeringly genius), by Richard Scarry, which I grew up with, examined weekly and carefully as a kid sitting in church (at least until I outgrew that particular kids' luxury), and attempted multiple times over the years to replicate.  At once the best kids' dictionary ever and just plain flippin' fun to look at.

I recommend, highly, Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever, not to mention anything else done by the man.

While I don't--or can't, really--recommend any one particular "A Is For..." alphabet book, at least not one that's published, as I mentioned before and if you're dealing with kids, make your own!  Way more fun, the kids get more out of it, and it's something they'll be proud to show off, hang on their wall, and mail to Grandma and Grandpa.  I'm one of my own, in fact and appropriate for the blog, that will be titled, "A Is for Author."  Geeky?  Geeky.  Yes!  And fun!

Wednesday's for Kids XV -- SEUSSIAN CAPTCHA

Happy Birthday, Good Doctor!

The Fraters Welosi and the Azablu Foush'ni

by Mr. Center with Captcha by Google

Old Zorlag and Jubat funcied in Welosi

wipling aboge’ more zyzafil ungly.

“If only, if only, weren’t Pento so mograble,”

said they, “then the pyrris would steshu inectable!”

But terrible Firlect, a construct of Flaticut

depotied the fraters and mingoed their crion up

a great ougue, with Paccateu the ceileable Azablu,

vesesurping their loger by blisting a proscu!

But Zorlag and Jubat weren’t so easy to blist,

and “Untroff!” they called to more fraters in Brabst,

who came bibling on dancles to speaf all the skarrems

of Pento the Mograble, now depotied to Foushens!

“Shulashu!” pierped Zorlag, the old frater of Jubat.

“For Pento’s old pyrris is grint up in Flaticut!

“Our aboge’ is zyzafil,” said Jubat, “and ungly,

and we can all mingo in ragit, Welosi.”

*  I certainly don't intend to flatter myself or harbor dishonor, because this pathetically pales alongside both the great authors; but this terrible "poem" bears elements (though certainly weakly) both Seussian and Carrollian.  Of course, Carroll never wrote, that I'm aware, in anapests (and Seuss did them clearly much better), and Seuss's inventions, like Carroll's, make sense.  Besides, I had to meet my own challenge.  Regardless, I wish Dr. Seuss a good birthday, wherever he is; his stories have shaped my life!

MORE ACCIDENTAL "POETRY"

I had an extra half-hour of prep-time available today, and so thought I'd try the random poetry thing again, only this time with just one book: my The Annotated Alice, the Definitive Edition.  Using only Carroll's words, and randomly generating page, line, and word numbers from which to start my word count for each "phrase."

Here are the parameters and their results, all randomly selected by the generator at random.org:

number of phrases (10-20):               12

words per phrase (3-5):                       5

Wonderland (1&3/5); page (7-127); line (1-38); word (1-10)

Looking-Glass (2&4/5); page (133-274); line (1-38); word (1-10)

"Wasp in a Wig" (5/5); page (293-298); line (1-38); word (1-10)

	book	page	line	word	phrase
1	4: LG	175	4	5	body is a crust, and
2	2: LG	229	33	6	a fabulous monster! the Unicorn
3	4: LG	158	14	3	you! cried the Tiger-lily, waving
4	5: WW	297	29	10	Wasp went on: but the
5	1: WL	62	5	8	be listening, so she went
6	5: WW	294	28	8	spread out the paper on
7	2: LG	198	10	1	What is the matter? she said
8	4: LG	188	8	2	he ate as many as
9	3: WL	9	24	1	rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket
10	1: WL	113	27	3	at the Hatter, who turned
11	3: WL	23	3	7	the great puzzle!  And she
12	5: WW	283	23	3	only shook his shoulders, and

What are you able to come up with if we allow that these phrases be organized in any order, so long as the 5 words for each remain contiguous?

Sunday Poetry XVII -- Accidental Poetry, and a "Writing" Challenge

Remember the "bookmash?"  There are two approaches to "creating" one, the first a little less pure than the second:  1, you find a bunch of book titles on your shelves or at the library or wherever, and you arrange them in such a way that the titles create a poem of sorts; 2, you look up at a recently read pile of books or a short row of them on your shelves, and they have already, accidentally, formed a poem.  I don't know about the other contributors, but I confess, I intentionally arranged my titles.

Not that this is bad, but what if the Fates had more to do with it?  

I'm going to try something and write it up as I go, and maybe it will turn out to be poetry, but maybe not.  (I am relying on the website www.random.org for my very numerological approach.)  The question, of course, before and after the completion of this little experiment, is this: 

Is there any value to accidental poetry, or other accidental art?

parameters	randomized result
Number of lines (3-15)	4
phrases per line (2-4)	3
words per phrase (3-5)	5

For each phrase, I’ll randomly assign a shelf number (1-7) from my fiction bookcases, a book number (1-25), a page number (1-200), a line number (1-25), and a word number from which to begin the phrase (1-15). 

(I have no idea how this is going to turn out.)

phrase	shelf	book	page	line	word	phrase
1	4	14	22	16	3	“rush.  a vortex” (Wicked – Macguire)
2	6	20	34	25	5	“richer tone was (Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck)
3	2	3	28	15	4	“part of the” (In the Time of Butterflies – Alvarez)
4	5	24	36	16	15	“light patch on” (Nightjohn – Paulsen)
5	7	19	35	15	3	“father also loses” (Fatherhood – Cosby)
6	2	6	53	23	2	“monastery.  Early boards” (Museum at Purgatory – Bantock)
7	3	11	24	2	10	“the other man” (The Mysterious Flam of Queen Loana – Eco)
8	1	5	168	14	9	“him the honor” (The Believer, March 05 – McSweeney’s)
9	4	12	3	11	4	“come here! – all” (Franz Kafka, Collected Stories)
10	4	19	79	24	9	“go, he said” (The Road – McCarthy)
11	2	2	95	13	2	“di iosafat qui (from Jehoshaphat above)” (The Inferno of Dante)
12	3	14	193	17	7	“drawer those nice” (On Literature – Eco)

The "Poem," unedited

by Accident

rush. a vortex richer tone was part of the

light patch on father also loses monastery.  Early boards

the other man him the honor come here! – all

go, he said from Jehoshaphat above drawer those nice

The “Poem,” with altered punctuation and line breaks

by Accident, with Help

Rush: A vortex;

richer tone was part of

the light, patch-on father—

also loses.

Monastery, early boards,

the other man:  Him

the honor come here!

“All go,” he said, from

Jehoshaphat above.

Drawer: those nice. 

So, obviously, this isn't a great poem, though I'm surprised at and pleased with some of the phrase combinations.  I bet if I do this a few more times, I might actually stumble upon something half-decent, or even, maybe, good.  

CHALLENGE:

Do this yourself,

see what you get,

post a comment here with your results.