Speccie: Trochaic

John Whitworth · #1 06-10-2010, 12:55 PM

Chris o'Carroll carried our banner not once but twice, for he is also Smith. So our transatlantic flavour is back and the Brits this week are vanquished. Well done Chris!

The competition looks something we can all do. The Hiawatha metre is so easy you can churn it out all day - which Longfellow did, after all. Carroll (Lewis) has a marvellous poem about photography which is worth looking up.

No. 2653: Trochaic
You are invited to submit a poem, written in the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, describing Hiawatha’s experiences at his computer (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 23 June.

Orwn Acra · #2 06-10-2010, 01:23 PM

Carroll's prose opening to "Hiawatha" is in the same meter.

John Whitworth · #3 06-13-2010, 04:56 AM

Not quite on message perhaps:

Hiawatha’s Computer

Hiawatha from his teepee,
Squatting at his new computer,
Sends a steady stream of emails
Winging to the global village,
Words of wisdom transcendental:
Buy the shares in British Petrol.
Buy them by the hundred thousand.
Put your shirt on deep sea drilling.

Winging like a shower of arrows
To the weaklings and the women,
Give no ear to idle prattle,
Wind farms, wave power, solar panels.
Spurn the devil. Put thy trust in
Technological advancement.
Follow Microsoft and Google.
Buy more shares in British Petrol.

Ann Drysdale · #4 06-13-2010, 06:33 AM

John, I can't make the second line work because I give cross-legged three syllables. If you want to make sure that muppets like me don't lose the plot so early on, you'd have to change it to "cross-legg'd" or express his position otherwise.

Also, you're using "sat" to mean sitting, rather than the past tense that sprang first to my mind, making line 3 sound wrong "should it not be sending?" I asked myself.

What if he were "squatting at his new computer"?

Just thinking aloud, as it were, while squatting at mine.