Also Entitled: My Career in Romantic Briefs, (or should that be the other way around?)
Recently I attempted to take up a career in Romantic Poetry. There hasn't been a market for this sort of thing for 200 odd years, so with my typically incisive business acumen, I figured now would be just as bad a time as any to get in on it.
I sat down at my desk with a few quires of paper, a pen, my neighbour's fob watch, and a tumbler full of hock and soda water, without the hock. Soon I had written these lines:
There's a linnet
On the spinet
And an ostrich
In it.
I thought that was pretty good going, so I stopped there and inhaled my tumblerful of soda water, without the water. Then I went on:
In a minute
I'll play a minuet.
That seemed to me to be getting a little tedious, so I hastily contrived to turn it into an ode in which the spinet flew away and built a nest in a briar-bush, and the linnet was taken away to be turned into candlesticks. (As for the minute and the minuet, they could have one another, as far as I was concerned.)
Then I started again.
The Throstlecock sate upon the hedge
Besides the little purling rill.
This was rather trying stuff, and I pretty much had to mix myself a glass of Pymms-coloured cordial. (To get the timbre right, I added a firkinful of brown sugar). Following this, I wrote:
The Cockling Throst, it throsted into the night;
The hedge is hurling still.
I paused to wipe the sweat off my brow, and immediately enclosed a copy of this electrifying quatrain in a letter addressed to 'Sir Joseph Addison, The Spectator', asking for his standard publication fee of 1 pound, 10 shillings. (I still have not heard back from him.)
After a little more thought, I set myself the simple task of writing an ode, in 172 stanzas, to the Pipit (or to the Peewit, Tit, Booby, Wren, Starling, Finch, Pigeon, or Sparrow, if the Pipit wasn't available). I then intended to divide the ode up into as many sonnets as possible and sell them at a reduced price in the Queen Victoria Markets. There follows an excerpted passage, which just coincidentally happens to be all I got around to writing. (Excerpts have seldom been more generous.) I call it, provisionally,
Lines Written Upon My First Viewing Of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey in Coburg Library
Naught on this earth is like unto the Pipit
To make my heart be full of joy and mirth,
Except it be the Peewit, Starling, Finch, Emu, Kiwi, Wren, or Peacock,
And creatures of a lesser girth.
Yea! There is in thee, o Pipit,
A hint of the sublime
That doth inhabit the eternal world,
And liv'st, in short (or should that be long?) for all time!
And doth presumably exceed
This, my poor rhyme.
Following this, I decided to give up my writing career in romantic poetry and take up a career in conceptual art, with an emphasis on the conceptual. From now on, you'll find me walking up and down Collins Street in the centre of Melbourne, wearing a shirt that says 'Jesus Is My Friend!' in an ironic fashion.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Tim, your links stink, you fink!
- John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet
- Broken Biro
- Poetry 24
- Superlative scribbles
- Kirstyn McD!
- Rorrim a tsomla almost a mirror
- More Sterne
- Sterne
- Cam the man from the Dan.
- Too hot to Raaaaaaandallllllll!
- Erin's Excellently Everlasting Effervescements!
- Slammy Infamy
- Hail Paco!
- Baron Blandwagon, purveyor of cyberbunnies, hawker of Roger Corman, and Misruler of the Multiverse
- The Bolta. Aiyeeeeee!!!!!
- Bad Apple Audrey
- The cartoon church
- Sir Martinkus
- A Zemblanian abroad and at home
- A hodge podge of hotzeplotz
- THE SLAMMA!
- Jottlesby's nottings, or should that be Nottlesby's jottings?
- The Snarking of the Hunt
- Jazzy Hands
- David of Metal City
- David the Barista
- The Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony
- Be an Opinion Dominion Minion!
- Mel...
- ... and Fel
- His brilliant career - from whale sushi to crumbed prawn
- Jo Blogs
- Yet another Tim
- Croucherisms...
- Was two peas, now three peas
- Desciopolous!
- ... Still Life - now with extra rotating cats!
- Erin...
- An Amazingly Awesome Australian Ampersand!
- Blink and you'll miss 'er
- Red in the land of the tigers!
- Wire of Vibe
- Chase him, ladies, he's in the cavalry!
- The Non-palindromical Editrix in Germanium
- Old Sterne
- Gempiricalisations
- TonyT
- The briefs...
- ... and the brieflets
- The Purple Blog
- Blairville, lair of all that is wicked and perfidious
- The enticingly acronymical CSH
- EXTREEEEEEEME WYNTER!
- Mark of California
- Jellyfish
- Silent Speaking
- Lexicon the Mexican
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(392)
-
▼
April
(41)
- Take That, Spenserian Stanza!
- Five Hundred Year Old Poetry For The Moment
- From Yesterday's Weekend Australian Magazine
- No Ilk Bar In Sight
- Disparaging Reviews of Everyday Objects
- Pointless Epigrams on Various Bloggers
- Blink And You'll Miss Her...
- Post For Broadway Geeks
- Television For Extremely Inattentive People
- Answering the Big Questions, Questioning the Big A...
- This Is All Tony Blair's Fault
- The Latest Ultimate Question
- List Of Smitings
- Another Poem
- Question
- Nothing Could Be Finer Than a Cup of Old One-Liner...
- What the Queen Said About Robert Menzies
- Fashion Charade
- I Went To the Brothel, And All I Got Was This Lous...
- Further Questions Answered
- A Clerihew
- The Department of Emoticon Regulation Answers Freq...
- Free Existence With Every Second Furniture Purchas...
- A Scientific Experiment
- Autobiography At Second Hand
- Cop That, Thomas Edison!
- Now We Know Why This Crocodile is Smiling...
- What To Expect When You're Expecting Satan
- One-word haikus
- Terse and Werse
- Obligatory 300 Post
- Unfortunately, Your Child Is Displaying All The Sy...
- Don't Move! There's a Fire-Breathing Freak-Beast F...
- Warning: Clowns Ahead
- Thought For The Day
- Antiprocrastination
- Colonel Pyatnivski
- Stanley, Hand Me The Axe
- Switched On To Switching Off
- Sither That Wedge
- Good Film See - You Look Look Now!
-
▼
April
(41)
18 comments:
My favourite lines in the whole vast library of Romantic poetry are these, by Mr Coleridge, "Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs/ Upon the slimy sea." Never have slimy things been depicted more eloquently.
I like that business with the pipit you've got going on. Definite potential. You just need to throw in a slimy thing or two.
I have a fondness for Hogg - "Quhaire haif ye been, ye three auld womyn/These three lange nichtis fra hame?" A little more ornamental than that Coleridge line there.
This piece, incidentally, was inspired by your excellent post on Wordsworth's soul the other day.
Wordsworth would be delighted. The more talk about his big soul, the better.
Would you accept a commission? I'd like a ballad, in Scots English, about a ventriloquist.
I was actually thinking along the lines of a website written by Mr Hogg, rather like Geoffrey Chaucer's website. You know, TheHoggBlog.blogspot.com. Devoted to political matters.
John Howard - quhat is the aulde buggere up to, and quhain will the bastarde go? PLUSSE: Hard-hittinge analysis of what the Jacobites are up too now! Ye'll be absolootly sconnered!
An spiffing plun! Boot quhare wull ye get the knolege?
Well, there's this old dude with a long grey beard and glittering eye who swears that he'll tell me all about it if I shout him a drink. When? I asked him. All he said was Eftsoons.
Eftsoons? Eftsoons? You stupid old git, I'll show you Eftsoons! I cried from the window.
You want to watch out for those eftsoon types. If you're not careful, he'll start outraging your delicate young ears with filthy stories about albatrosses.
I knew the Albert Rosses back in my Boer War days. Maybe I should take the old chap up on that offer.
I was suggested this blog by my cousin. I am not sure whether this post is written
by him as nobody else know such detailed about my difficulty.
You're amazing! Thanks!
Also see my page - spanish name day
It’s actually a great and helpful piece of info.
I am glad that you
shared this useful info with us. Please keep us up
to date like this. Thanks for
sharing.
Feel free to surf my weblog - http://talkingtourism.info
I do love the manner in which you have framed this specific matter
and it really does
supply us a lot of fodder for thought. On the other hand, from everything that I
have observed, I simply just
trust when the
opinions stack on that people today remain
on issue and not embark on a soap box of some other news du jour.
Anyway, thank you for this
fantastic piece and whilst I do not really agree with it in totality, I regard
the viewpoint.
Feel free to visit my blog post - http://beyazdilekce-writing.blogspot.ru
I do love the manner in which you have presented this specific difficulty and it really does offer
us a lot of fodder for thought. Nevertheless, because
of everything that I
have experienced, I simply just
hope as the feedback pack on that people keep
on issue and not get started upon a tirade
regarding the news du jour. Still, thank you for this
exceptional point and although I do not agree with it in totality,
I respect
your standpoint.
Check out my web blog : murderer
I'm still learning from you, but I'm trying to reach
my goals. I absolutely enjoy reading all
that is posted on your site.Keep the stories coming. I
enjoyed it!
Feel free to visit my web site : radiojona.blogspot.ru
advertising and ***********
with Adwords. Well I am including this RSS to my
email and can glance out
for a lot more of your respective interesting content.
Make sure you replace this once more soon.
.
My site - Rico
advertising
Feel free to surf my webpage : granada Spain tourist attractions
My spouse and I stumbled over here from a different website and thought I should check things out.
I like what I see so now i am following you. Look forward
to looking at your web page yet again.
my web page - flouters
Good write-up, I am normal visitor of one’s site, maintain
up the
nice operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy
time.
my page: www.zabbix.com
My brother recommended I might like this web site.
He was totally right. This post
actually made my day. You cann't imagine simply how much time I had spent for this
info! Thanks!
Here is my blog post : canaldemusica.com
Post a Comment