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08-23-2010, 05:03 PM
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Demonstrating Defenestration.
Thanks for all efforts. His poems seem fine light verse, at the very least, with some mysterious extra ingredient. I have found this copy of "Defenestration" in some student's dissertation on comic verse, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. The name/character McIndoe seems oddly familiar. I will have to get back to more research. I can find no other reference to "Pauline Dorricott Books" as a publisher.
DEFENESTRATION
I once had the honour of meeting a philosopher called McIndoe
Who had once had the honour of being flung out of an upstairs window.
During his flight, he said, he commenced an interesting train of speculation
On why there happened to be such a word as defenestration.
There is not a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;
There is no verb to describe the action of beating a man to death with a putter;
No adjective exists to qualify a man bound to the buffer of the 12.10 to Ealing,
No abstract noun to mollify a man hung upside down by his ankles from the ceiling.
Why, then, of all the possible offences so distressing to humanitarians,
Should this one alone have caught the attention of the verbarians?
I concluded (said McIndoe) that the incidence of logodaedaly was purely adventitious.
About a thirtieth of a second later, I landed in a bush that my great-aunt brought back from Mauritius.
I am aware (he said) that defenestration is not limited to the flinging of men through the window.
On this occasion, however, it was limited, the object defenestrated being, I, the philosopher, McIndoe.
R.P.Lister.
Logodaedaly! What a wonderful word! Steve.
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08-23-2010, 05:10 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 4,664
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That is hilarious, Steve! I cannot stop laughing! This is wonderful stuff. I love the last line of "I thought I saw stars", too!
Amazing comic flair, this Mister Lister.
Cally
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08-24-2010, 12:58 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Devon England
Posts: 1,708
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A couple of minor differences in the text I have:
L5 There is not, he said, a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;
LL14 On this occasion, however, it was so limited, the object defenestrated being I, the philosopher, McIndoe.
I'll add to the rapidly-assembling corpus with 'Taxidermy' when I have more time.
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08-24-2010, 03:36 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Devon England
Posts: 1,708
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Taxidermy R.P. Lister
TAXIDERMY
The trouble is with taxidermy
That creatures stuffed with loving care
Become, in future ages, wormy,
And fall to pieces in the air.
The most obese and lifelike beaver
Stuffed by Tim Pettigrew of Penge,
Will vanish like a passing fever
Compared with Byblos or Stonehenge.
The taxidermist's art is vagrant,
A fleeting thing that fades too soon,
Condemned to wither, like the fragrant
Roses beneath the summer moon.
Those moles and ferrets, elks and vipers,
Though stuffed apparently to stay
Are like the airs of distant pipers
That mercifully fade away.
Where are they now, the cunning foxes,
The lovebirds in their glassy case?
Turned rotten at the core, like Coxes
Kept in an injudicious place.
The leopards, tastefully engladed,
The coy koalas, short and stout -
Their fur is by the moth invaded,
Their beady little eyes drop out.
How fleet of Finnish foot was Nurmi!
How lissom Lenglen on the court!
And so it is with taxidermy;
Not only life, but art is short.
Punch April 1965
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08-24-2010, 03:43 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 14,175
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How fleet of Finnish foot was Nurmi!
How nice to see Nurmi immortalized in a poem. As the Bard said "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
Moreover it is an excellent verse.
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08-25-2010, 01:29 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Stocksbridge. Near the Dark Peak.
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More Listerology, Listerania, Listermania.
Thanks Jerome! Thanks R.P!
What a wonderful poem, stuffed full of delights.
I am heading deeper into the mystery; I plan to visit the British Library next week to look at some of R.P's books.(I had to choose three.) I'm in search of more biographical background on him.
"Not only life, but art is short." What irony in that last line, when you consider that he was born in 1914 and may be 96 now!
"How lissom Lenglen on the court!" Ha! Better than Betjeman!
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08-25-2010, 01:44 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12,945
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That poem, 'Taxidermy' is art. Is it great art. Is Tom and Jerry great art. I would say yes, one of America's two most important contributions to popular art in the 20th century. The other is Louis Armstrong. Lister's poem is very good art indeed.
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08-25-2010, 06:20 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Stocksbridge. Near the Dark Peak.
Posts: 1,524
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Investigations
My quest for R.P.Lister continues. I am going down with my wife Adrienne.(Ariadne and Theseus ?) next Tuesday to the British Library. I have registered as a reader and asked to look at “Allotments”, “Rebecca Redfern” and “Me and the Holy Spirit.” We also intend to look at the current “Maps” exhibition.
Thanks David, but even enlarged and squinted at through a magnifying glass the New Yorker pieces are unreadable. It looks like its Subscription or nothing.
Thanks Bill, where did you find those?
Meanwhile I’m reprinting his poem from the 1978 Oxford Book of Light Verse in this thread for those who may have missed it. Does no one own a book by Richard Percival Lister yet?
The Revolutionaries.
O tremble all you earthly Princes,
Bow down the crowned and chrism'd nob;
Wise is the Potentate that winces
At the just clamour of the mob.
Shiver, ye bishops, doff your mitres,
Huddle between your empty pews
Here comes a horde of left- wing writers
Brandishing salmon-pink reviews.
Comes the New Age, Your outworn faces
Vanish at our enlightened curse,
While we erect in your old places
Something considerably worse.
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08-26-2010, 08:43 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Stocksbridge. Near the Dark Peak.
Posts: 1,524
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The Beast Arrives.
Good news and bad news. Today I am the proud owner of the novel “The Questing Beast” by R.P.Lister, published by Chapman and Hall, London 1965. The bad news is that there is not a scrap of biographical information on the book jacket. Does the man have a Salinger complex (pre-dating Salinger)?
This is the blurb from the jacket...
“It is through the ironic eyes of Michael Mendel, jovial “king of film”, that we view in this novel the feckless progress of Pellinew. Invalided out of the army in the early part of the last war, Pellinew becomes a civilian in London. He is a man apparently without aim or ambition, innocent and impulsive in the conduct of his life. Unequipped as he seems to face the rigours of wartime London (and reader will realise, from Mr.Lister’s admirable evocation, that wartime London is more than just the setting of this book) he continually surprises. He surprises by his jobs, which are always fatuous and yet clearly satisfy him; by his friendships – with Mendel himself; with Waterfield, a radical intellectual editor; with Dinnock, an enquiring American psychiatrist for whom, absurdly, Pellinew types. But above all, Pellinew surprises us by his attachments. His attraction for women is difficult to understand. Marie is beautiful, clever and sophisticated; Elaine is pretty, nice and rather silly. Both these women, widely different in every aspect, want Pellinew; his reaction to them, which is unassuming and sublime, is somehow quite appropriate.
The Questing Beast is a relaxed book. Intricately worked out, it reads with deceptive simplicity. Mr. Lister’s characters are all perfectly realised, and they interact upon each other in just the right way."
I like that! “A relaxed book”. Just what I need.
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08-28-2010, 11:12 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Stocksbridge. Near the Dark Peak.
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Against the door.
Today I received THe Idle Demon by R.P.Lister Andre Deutsch 1958. It is stuffed full of treasures originally published in Punch, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. Once again there is no biographical information. I have never met a more secretive or self-effacing writer!
Here’s one that seems apt:
How Not To Deal With Closed Doors.
I dashed my head against a door,
And one of us was hurt the more.
Either the door, that is, or I.
I know that men and doors must die,
And none of us can live forever.
That is the worst of being clever.
I take all knowledge for my realm,
And grasp, if anything, the helm,
And sail my ship of phantom spars
Into a glowing mist of stars.
Crashing at last to parent earth,
I wonder what the trip was worth.
The truth is, I was never born.
I am a kind of unicorn,
Bred for the never-never land
Where no one tries to understand.
I cannot cope with solid matter,
Or else I should have grown much fatter.
Around the corner, as I stare,
Lies the non-nascent everywhere.
I think about the days gone by,
The time to live, the time to die.
I dash my head against the door,
And one of us is hurt the more.
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