Speccie Secondhand by 8 August
 

This was one for the A team, or most of them viz Bill Greenwell, Brian Allgar and Chris O'Carroll. I didn't even get to the starting line though I'm an avid scandifan, but these guys are right on the button. They were so good they all read like the same book. I particularly liked Brian Allgar getting Ruth Rendell in there.

The next competition is more my sort of thing. I am sure lots of you will do something good.

NO. 2759: second hand
You are invited to submit a well-known poem rewritten by another well-known poet, e.g., T.S. Eliot rewrites ‘Ozymandias’ (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 8 August.

This strikes me as near impossible: I'll sit it out and watch the Masters (and Mistresses) get to work on it.

We've done that around here before. I think we called it "cross-dressing" poems. Here's one very old one of mine I dug up that it technically 16 lines but still seems too long and lame to enter:


Ode to a Nightingale (Keats), by Ogden Nash


1.

You know the way your heart can ache as if you swallowed hemlock and it was making you feel somewhat sleepy and nappy?

Well, right now it's happening to me, and all because a nightingale off in the trees is singing in a way that I almost envy but which scares me into thinking maybe there's such a thing as being too happy.


2.

Oh how great it would be to have some excellent sparkling wine and a huge goblet that I could fill up so the beaded bubbles would sparkle right up to the brim.

I'd love to get so utterly drunk that my consciousness would fade away and I could invisibly follow you out into the forest where it's extremely dim.


3.

I could fade away, in fact, and quite forget all the horrible things that a bird like you doesn't even know about, like illness and mortality and so many problems that the very act of thinking causes sorrow,

and like the fact that love doesn't last beyond tomorrow.


4.

Away! Away! I plan to follow you, not by getting drunk but writing verse.

The night is tender! The stars are bright but their light doesn't reach me here in this garden and it's like a a perfectly dark yet somehow glowing universe.

5.

I can't see the flowers at my feet or get a look at the amazing stuff I'm smelling in the garden as I lie here in the grass beside a tree,

but there must be lots of hawthorn, pastoral eglantine, violets and musk rose, or at least that's what it smells like to me.

6.

I'm listening to you here in the dark as I proclaim that I've often thought about dying a painless death, and I've even written poems in which I've made that boast.

And now more than ever death would be sweet if I could do it while you were singing and if you'd promise to keep on singing after I turned to compost.

7.

You don't know from death, oh bird, and your voice has been heard since ancient times by everyone from emperors to Ruth among the corn.

Your song's forlorn.

8.

And now's the time for me to bid you adieu and to give up my vain desire of using poems or wine to lose myself while finding bliss in the losing.

Your song is fading and now it's pretty much gone. Am I awake or snoozing?

Well, it IS sixteen lnes but Im not sure she'll wear lines as long as that. Pity. I like it.

Philip Larkin Rewrites Dunbar's 'Timor Mortis'

Whenever I succumb to cold
I fear the end of being old.
Whenever I am sick in bed
I worry about being dead.

For Death's a democratic thing.
The Queen will die. Her dad the King,
He died. Dad did. They all go through it.
There's nobody who doesn't do it.

Financiers, as rich as Croesus,
Fall prey to various diseases.
Immortal poets, even those,
In course of time turn up their toes.

Eliot, Housman, Auden, Larkin,
All call, perforce, the Lord of Dark in.
He stills our song. He stops our breath.
I am consumed by Fear of Death.

I also recall that many of us here rewrote the Red Wheelbarrow poem in the mode of a variety of poets. I've just looked at mine, and they don't stand the test of time, but others here might dust theirs off and see if they fly.

Rondel

François Villon paraphrases the sentiments
of the Duke of Orleans -

Now sling your hook and bugger off
Remorse, regret, repentance, rue
I’ve had it with the lot of you.
You’ve fucked things up for long enough,
Pissed on my chips and ruined stuff –
As of today I’ll start anew
So sling your hook and bugger off
Remorse, regret, repentance, rue
If you come back I might get rough
With all you lily-livered crew.
I’ll kick your arses black and blue
And if you whinge and whimper – tough!
Now sling your hook and bugger off.

Delightful, John! You know what I've long suspected--that death can be made into a feverishly amusing theme. I'm especially fond of your

...Her dad the King,
He died. Dad did...

for reasons I shall keep a state secret.

I wonder if it's okay to recast a soliloquy instead of a "poem"? If so, some of us may re-use items from an earlier contest.

Ann, it's a delight.

Ann, I know nothing about Villon or the Duc d'Orleans, but I love the phrase:

Pissed on my chips

It reminds me of when I was at school. The boys who served the meals had "first grab" at seconds, although they continued serving the others. This sometimes led to conflict. One boy, to ensure that his extra helping was still there when he had finished serving, glared at the other server, and spat in his own brimming plate of lumpy tapioca. When he got back, the other boy had eaten it.

Thanks, John.

Sadly, though, it's not shiny-new. It has had one previous owner (who drove it carefully to church and back of a Sunday).

Probably one too many for Lucy, though, who likes the smell of new leather.

ah, but how will she know?

Well, if the car's ever been driven to Syria, Lucy will probably smell Ma'arrat.

Sorry, Brian - I wasn't ignoring you - we crossposted.

Your tapioca story brought back a memory of mine. A friend and I applied for a grant to "buy time" to finish works in progress and we'd agreed that the one who got it would treat the other to a slap-up feed. I was lucky, so the meal was my shout. As we entered the restaurant a voice whispered "good evening, Miss" and my friend recognised the waiter as a lad she'd been instrumental in dismissing from the school she worked at. As we sat down, I advised "don't have the soup!"

I was thinking, Brian. The sharing of bodily fluids is often an act of love. Or wasn't it that kind of school?

John

My school, indeed, was rather Rugger-y,
Which often leads to acts of buggery;
But as for me, I hated all such sports,
And bums in scrums provoked no lustful thoughts.

From Auguries of Innocence by William Carlos Williams


To see a world in a farmer’s shed,
and a heaven where raindrops quicken,
glazing a wheelbarrow painted red,
and eternity in a chicken.

Marion - that made me snort my tea down my nose! Yes!

"... and eternity in a chicken" - superb!

Mind you, I once bought one that was nearly that old.

Marion, I love it.

[Millay rewrites Dylan Thomas]

My father's life, like all things, ends;
He will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
I wish that he would fight!

From Gavin Ewart

Among men who play rugger
One seldom finds a bugger.
Nobody strokes a bum
In the scrum.

Nevertheless...




Masterly punctuation!

John, I promise you I'd never come across that one. My thoughts on buggery are all my own.

Roger. Love that Millay-Thomas.

William Carlos Williams, rewritten by Robert Frost:

Two plums sat chilled in an icebox bowl,
And sorry that only two remained,
I saw the darkness in my soul --
The midnight lack of self-control --
And knew I could not be restrained.

Oh, Yankee farmers' traits are swell:
To go without, to self-deny --
But in wee small hours, they're quiet hell;
You'd understand, were you as well
Acquainted with the night as I.

I should be telling this with remorse,
And yes, perhaps in time I may:
I yielded to that baser force --
It's why I wrote this note, of course --
I ate the plums. This is just to say.

Well done, Brendan!

Excellent, Brendan!

I'm not sure, but maybe in the last line "I ate them" instead of "I ate the plums" would avoid a five-beat reading of the line and place a proper emphasis on "This"?

Janice, thanks.

Mother Goose Does Keats

Mary had a Grecian Urn
Whose pictures made her glad,
Yet sometimes when she thought a bit
They also made her sad.

The pictures did not move at all.
A thousand years perhaps
Gone by since someone made the Urn
But time did not elapse

Inside the worlds the pictures showed.
No change, no end of youth.
One moment, endless, beautiful.
And beauty is the truth.

However, Mary also knew
And did not need to prove
That truth and beauty have no use
For people who can't move.

Wordsworth also had a go at the Grecian Urn:

I found an urn, still undefiled,
A sort of spotless earthen bride;
How charmingly the thing was styled -
’Twas rather tall, but not so wide.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those
That make no sound remain unheard.
This youth who strikes a singer’s pose
Is silent as a plaster bird.

And all those painted gods and men,
Though they appear to rush and scurry,
Being but works of brush and pen
Are going nowhere in a hurry.

This urn recalls the Poet’s duty
To speak the Truth, or do his best;
There’s something else, concerning Beauty,
But I have quite forgot the rest.

Inspired, Brian!
Witty as per usual, Roger.

Together a bright perker-upper in 2012's habitually overcast summer.

Dorothy Parker rewrites To His Coy Mistress

Men seldom make passes
At girls with dead asses.

Swap shop
 

John Masefield writes The Ballad of Reading Gaol

We must go down to the gallows again, to the lonely gallows and see
This wretched man, like many here, who never will be free:
With the wistful eyes and the swollen purple throat, with blood on his hands;
For each man kills the thing he loves, which nobody understands.

We must go down to the gallows again, to the gallows where bad men die,
But I’ll look up at that tent of blue we prisoners call the sky,
And the man who killed the thing he loved, the man whose life they’re taking,
Will swing from a rope and cleanse his soul of sin, while hearts are breaking.

We must go down to the gallows again, where the man who used a knife
Will pay the price, in a pit of shame, for taking a woman’s life.
And for those who do such deeds as this the end is always the same:
A trial, a cell, then hanged by the neck, and a grave without a name.

Oscar Wilde writes Sea Fever

I really miss the English coast,
xxFor sea and sky are blue,
And sea and sky are on my mind
xxPerpetually, it’s true.
Tall ships and stars, white sails and wind,
xxI miss all those things too.

I really must go down again
xxTo hear the sea-gulls cry,
To see the spume and feel the spray
xxAnd watch the clouds roll by.
And all I ask is P and Q
xxWhen it’s time for me to die!

Very nice, Jayne.

Seconded. But still puzzling over dead asses. I know that "over there" an ass is an arse, but...? Is it biblical?

Well, I suppose if your arse is dead, so is the rest of you. Perhaps too a comment on Marvell's sexual practises. But do we know them? A hottie is, I believe, Australian for a hot water bottle. Hence:

Men seldom make hotties
Of moribund botties.

I know that apart from being specific to the gluteal area, the ass, especially the sorry (as distict from hopeful?) ass, signifies the whole self. Why, we Brits do that - viz. get your arse out of here. I always used to wonder why we spoke of "head" of cattle when quantifying a herd, since their arses were, on balance, so much more valuable.

But in this particular case, are these the all-embracing arses, and actually dead (necrophilia?) or are we still below the belt and referring (if I may be so bold) to the lady-garden, and hence to the implication of frigidity. This, though brings the problem that the gentleman has to make the pass before he can make the judgement.

I think it would make more sense (and I think Dottie would back me up here) that "Men don't repeat passes..."

Do you get my indelicate drift?

Such elegant writing, Ann. Truly a pleasure to read and re-read.

I hesitate to be quick and crude, but (and I am willing to be corrected by the ugly but more knowing gender) in my erstwhile homeland the expressions, " out to get a little ass, hoping to get a little ass", ad infinitum) stem from the proposition of being literally hands-on in one's endeavor, that is to say, that the hands cup the buttocks and forcefully draw the anterior part of the posterior toward the perpetrator's equally nether region.

Peeking through the veil of genteel euphemisms at a fundamental noun & popular synecdoche, I am moved to recommend 'Kiss Your Ass Goodbye' by hardass author Charles Willeford.

And then there was that Elizabethan policewoman who caused Shakespeare to write "The Law is a piece of ass!"

My Dorothy Parker doesn't work, I guess, but I dreamed of winning with under ten words.

I have a "piece of ass" meditation in Per Contra, by the way. The first of the two limericks is on point:

Dame Rhetoric

Synecdoche means when we name
A thing by a part of the same,
As folks with no class
Say "a fine piece of ass"
When referring to all of the dame.

Metonymy's almost the same.
It means when we give things the name
Of something related:
"A skirt that I dated"
Refers not to clothes but a dame.