RIDDLE ME THIS
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “riddle” as “a question or statement phrased so as to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or meaning.” Winston Churchill during the Second World War used the word and two of its synonyms when he said, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” which perhaps might itself define the Zen “unanswerable question,” or koan, the most famous of which is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
As Yoel Hoffman noted in Japanese Death Poems (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1986), "Zen literature eventually came to serve as a means to enlightenment in Zen monasteries. Several times a week, every monk would meet alone with the master. The latter would tell an anecdote or present a koan, a sort of problem or riddle from Zen literature. The monk's response would not necessarily be verbal, and it is often difficult to see the connection between the answer and the anecdote."
The heart is a coin
of fire. How shall we spend it?
How is the sun spent?
¾ Lewis Turco (from Seasons of the Blood)
A famous ancient riddle is one that Oedipus is said to have solved:
THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX
What moves upon four legs at dawn,
Walks upon two later on;
Then, as the sun dips to the sea,
Hobbles along on only three?
¾ Wesli Court
The answer is “Mankind” which crawls on all fours in the {metaphorical) morning, walks on two legs at noon, and on three legs (two legs and a walking stick) in the evening. Some accounts have a second riddle as well:
THE TWO SISTERS
There is a sister of this earth
Who gives her twin the gift of birth;
The second sister, when she is born,
Bears her twin the following morn.
¾ Wesli Court
The “sisters” are “Night and Day.”
"The Mystery" is attributed to Amergin (ca. 6th century), reputedly the eldest Irish bard, if one excludes St. Patrick, who has been credited with poems as well as other sorts of writing. "The Mystery" exhibits parallel construction, for each line is an independent clause beginning with either "I am the" or "Who." Grammatic parallelism, whether used in verse or in prose composition, is the oldest prosody in the world, antedating accentual verse by many centuries, but used as often today (erroneously called “free verse” by many) as in ancient Chaldea. The problem with this riddle is that no one knows its answer:
THE MYSTERY
I am the breeze breathed at sea,
I am the wave woven of ocean,
I am the soft sound of spume,
I am the bull of the seven battles,
I am the cormorant upon the cliff,
I am the spear of the sun striking,
I am the rose of the fairest rose.
I am the wild bull of war,
I am the salmon stroking the flood,
I am the mere upon the moor,
I am the rune of rare lore,
I am the tooth of the long lance,
I am He who fired the head.
Who emblazons the mountain-meeting?
Who heralds the moon's marches?
Who leads the sun to its lair?
I am the Word, I am the Eye.
¾ Amergin (v. Wesli Court)
"A Riddle" is also an ancient Irish bardic poem, in this case totally anonymous:
A RIDDLE
Riddle me this —
Knew the Flood's kiss,
Has a snake's hiss,
This great creature,
Fleshless, boneless,
Senseless, bloodless,
Headless, footless,
Older nor younger
Than he started,
Never daunted,
Not live nor dead,
Ever useful —
God in Heaven,
What origin?
Great wonders Thine
Who made this bull.
In woods, in leas,
Ageless, griefless,
Ever hurtless,
Of equal age
With the Eras,
Older than hours
From Time's ewers;
Broad as the gauge
Of all the Earth.
He had no birth,
Nor has he girth
On land or sea.
Trust him to hum —
He will lie dumb
And will not come
If it need be.
Bull of the air
Beyond compare,
None may ensnare
Him in his den
On the sea-cliff.
He'll roar, he'll cough,
Mannerless oaf —
Savage again
Crossing the land
Roaring and grand,
Then hushed and bland,
Fey as a boy,
then with a shout
Lashing about
Earth in a rout.
Wickedness, joy,
Hidden, yet seen
In his careen,
Heard in his whine
First here, then there,
Hurling, twirling,
Ever breaking,
Never paying
Bull of the air.
Blameless as sky,
He is wet, dry,
Often comes by.
Old Man-fashioned,
Like everything
From beginning
Unto ending —
He is the wind.
— Anonymous Welsh author (v. Wesli Court)
These literary jokes are from the anonymous Old English, and they appear here in Anglo-Saxon prosody, as in the original versions:
THREE RIDDLES
I.
The world's wonder, I liven wenches,
A boon to townsfolk, a bane to none,
Though haply I prick her who picks me.
Well-planted, I stand in a bed
With my rogue root. Rarely, mayhap,
Some carline, careless and daring,
Rasps my red tip, wrenches my head,
Lays me to larder. I teach her lore,
This curly-hair who clasps me thus,
And after our meeting moisten her eye.
II.
Fire-fretted, I flirt with wind;
Limbs light-fraught, I'm lapped in flame;
Storm-crambled, I strive to fly:
A grove of leaves, a glowing flinder.
Hand to hand, I ring the hall —
Lords and ladies love to toast me.
When I heighten and all the folk
Bow before me, then their blessings
Shall soar beneath my befriending gleaming.
III.
Swung at thigh, a wizard thing!
Below his belt, beneath the folds
Of robes I dangle with my single eye.
Stiff and stout, I swivel about.
Aiming the head of his well-hung tool,
My holder hoists his hem knee-high:
He wants to fill a famous hole
That I fit well at length and more —
What will be filled has been filled before
— Anonymous Anglo-Saxon authors (v. Wesli Court)
The answers are, in order, I) an onion; II) a wooden torch; III) a key.]
This is an anonymous Old English dirge in Anglo-Saxon prosody, as in the original. The stichs (lines) are split at the caesurae (pauses) into hemistichs (half-lines) and stepped.
THE CURSE OF DEATH
An abode was built ye
Ere you were born;
For ye a mold minted
Ere your mother made ye.
Its height is not scaled
Nor depth delved,
It is never locked,
Be it ever so long,
Until I fetch ye
Where you be fettered —
Fettered and measured
For sod and mould.
Nor be your house
High-timbered, nay —
It be unhigh and low;
When you be therein
Heel-ways are low,
Side-ways unhigh.
The roof is raised
Full nigh your breast:
Thus you in fell mould
Shall dwell full cold,
In dim and dark,
Your weal turned doleful.
That door is doorless
And dark it is within —
There you be fastled,
And Death keeps the keys;
Loathly is that earth-house,
Grim to dwell in,
Yet there shall you dwell
And worms deal with ye,
Thus you be laid
And lorn of your friends,
For you have no friend
Who will fare with ye,
None who will look to
Your house-liking
Nor ever undo
The latch of that door
And ask after ye,
For soon you be loathly
And ugsome to see.
— Anonymous Anglo-Saxon author (v. Wesli Court)
The “abode,” needless to say, is the coffin.
In the Spanish pregunta one poet grills another poet with a requesta (question), the second replies with a respuesta (response). An evasive trick beloved especially of politicians is to answer a question with a question:
PUNTA PREGUNTA
What is it a woman lacks?
What is it that she attacks?
What is it a woman loves?
When is it she wears no gloves?
What is it for which she begs?
What is it that has no legs?
Why does she so love to dance?
What is it for which she pants?
Would a woman sell her soul?
Are there markets pole to pole?
Does a woman have a choice?
None at all that she can voice.
Why does she not have her say?
She must heed her DNA.
- — Lewis Turco
RESPUESTA APUESTA
What is each man's most ancient need?
What does the helpless captive feed?
What grows when hungry, shrinks when sated?
What loves the task for which it's fated?
What is it men can never do?
What process knits a third from two?
Where does a man most long to be?
Where was he first, and not yet free?
What keeps a man, at last, alone?
What does he buy that he can't own?
Do men profess what they believe?
Not since Adam turned on Eve.
When do men hunch over their beer?
When there's no more they want to hear.
— Hanir Pilastela
Here is a riddle that contains multiple puns:
QUADRUPUNDLE
A feline, legs shorter on a side;
A rancher whose hands all like to ride;
A roll of his herd out on the range;
A chemical not subject to change
Through a reaction -- these are the gist
Of the ONE word I want:
-- Lewis Turco
Daniel Hoffman took this little verse and made a true poem of it by expanding it and discussing the personalities involved in the situation, as he imagined them:
A TRIP TO ST. IVES
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits -
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?
— Anonymous
Hoffman’s poem is a work consisting of nine quatrains, all of them typographically like the first:
AS I WAS GOING TO ST. IVES
As I was going to Saint Ives
In stormy, windy, sunny weather,
I met a man with seven wives
(The herons stand on the swift water).
One might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that this is an accentual-syllabic poem, but one would be wrong, for scansion shows that there is no recurring normative foot in the first or fourth lines, although the second and third appear to be iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet: È¢ | È¢| È¢| È¢ ). The fourth line starts out the same way; however, it breaks down in the second half of the line into what look like an anapest and a trochee (ÈÈ¢| ¢È). Likewise, a syllable count yields lines of 8-9-8-9 syllables, but this regularity breaks down in the third stanza. Inasmuch as there is an overt cadence running through the poem, one concludes that this is an accentual poem. Specifically, Hoffman's "As I Was Going to Saint Ives" is written in podic prosody.
Hoffman has invented a nonce stanza that contains double refrains — lines two and four are incrementally repeated throughout the poem; in fact, line two merely keeps the end-word "weather" as the object of a prepositional phrase containing different modifiers in each stanza. Line four is a statement describing herons in various terms each time it recurs, and it is set off by parentheses. Lines one and three are rising true-rhymes, but two and four are falling consonances (weather-water). The rhyme scheme, then, is aB1aB2, cB1cB2, and so forth, the refrains consonating (the capital letters indicate refrains; the superscript numbers indicate that, though the refrains rhyme, they are different lines).
Other sonic devices used in the first stanza and throughout the poem are assonance (I-Ives), alliteration (windy-weather, stormy-sunny, and met-man); consonantal and vocalic echo (the n in "Saint," "windy," "sunny"; the short e in "weather," "met," "seven," and "heron"). There is repetition, especially of the words "stand" (refrains of stanzas 1, 2, 5, 6, 8) and "still" (refrains of stanzas 2, 3, 4, 9); the two words occur in a tandem relationship in stanza two ("stand still").
By the time stanza one has been analyzed on the typographical and sonic levels, it is apparent that Hoffman has written an imitation Scots ballad in the stanza form called long hymnal stanza, which he has modified with refrains. On the sensory level something else is immediately apparent as well: a major trope is allusion. Both the title and the first line are an allusion to the famous nursery-rhyme riddle, the answer to which is one — only the man was going to Saint Ives; all the rest were presumably going in the opposite direction. Another trope is the herons, an ancient symbol of morning and of regeneration, whose image is doubled reflectively in the water when it is still. There is subdued metaphor (the man and his wife are herons), and many descriptions. Stanza one is a prologue or an introduction. Following stanzas discuss each of the seven wives:
One drinks her beer out of his can
In stormy, windy, and bright weather,
And who laughs more, she or her man?
(The herons stand still on the water.)
Clearly, this wife is a pal, a companion, but the next is the lover, the romantic partner:
One knows the room his candle lit,
In stormy, lightning, cloudburst weather,
That glows again at the thought of it
(Two herons still the swift water.)
The next wife is the nag, the harridan:
His jealous, wild-tongued, Wednesday's wife —
In dreepy, wintry, wind-lashed weather
What's better than that ranting strife?
(Two herons still the roaring water.)
From this stanza we know that wife number three is "Wednesday's wife"; therefore, we infer that stanza two is Monday's wife, stanza three, Tuesday's, and so on. Thursday's wife, number four in stanza five, is the soulmate:
There's one whose mind's so like his mind
In streaming wind or balmy weather,
All joy, all wisdom seem one kind.
(The herons stand in the swift water.)
Friday's wife is the woman of mystery, the feminine enigma:
And one whose secret mazes he
In moon-swept, in torrential weather
Ransacks, and cannot find the key
(Two herons stand in the white water.)
Stanza eight is a transformational stanza,
And when to Saint Ives then I came
In fairest, rainiest, windiest weather,
They called his shadow by my name,
(The herons stand in the quick water.),
in which the traveler to Saint Ives becomes the man with seven wives. Now the answer to the riddle is "one plus seven wives," so there are, assumedly, eight people who arrive in the town. However, in the climactic last stanza, Sunday's wife, the seventh woman, is "the one":
And the one whose love moves all he's done,
In windy, warm, and wintry weather,
What can he leave but speaks thereon?
(Two herons still the swift water.) (Hoffman, 56)
She is the one wife who is all the other wives; she is the only woman the man loves, and she is his companion, lover, nag, soul-mate, mystery woman, and lust-object all wrapped up in one person. The last line tells the reader how many arrive in Saint Ives, at the end of the journey.
On the ideational level, then, the subject of the poem is "wives," or perhaps merely "wife." The schemas used are constructional (as in the parallel structures of the first lines of each stanza, in which "one,"-"one"-"none" parallels are drawn, except in stanza four, which gives us the clue to the days-of-the-week sequence), and repetitional. The whole poem is an inclusive structure relying heavily on prolepsis.
The viewpoint of the poem is narrative; specifically, author-oriented, third-person, single-angle (following only one character, as it turns out), with subjective access (we know she thinks what he thinks). This is true until the penultimate stanza, when the narrator becomes the protagonist as well, and the viewpoint is seen to be character-oriented also. Poetic syntax is objective, and the level of diction is poetic: it is colloquial with an archaic overlay, a modern rendition of the language of balladry. The style must be seen, then, as high rather than mean, it is soliterary, though it is not at all inaccessible. The themeof the poem might be rendered as, "A man's wife is all women to him."
Fusionally, thegenre of the poem is that of the lyric narrative with a strong didactic element. The levels Hoffman emphasizes are the sonicand the sensory — there is nothing original in theideational level; treatment is everything here. All levels support the theme. It is a fine poem, but perhaps because it is intended to be a riddle, some readers find it to be obscure at first, especially those who led deprived childhoods and never heard the original nursery rhyme.
In the English language tradition many riddles are the basis for nursery rhymes, and nursery rhymes, usually written anonymously and therefore examples of folklore, date from the early Renaissance in the British Isles and are usually written in podic prosody. The answers to the following traditional riddles will be found at the end of the series:
HUMPTY DUMPTY
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.
— Anonymous
THE VAULT
In marble walls as white as milk
Lined with a skin as soft as silk
Within a fountain crystal clear
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors there are to this stronghold,
Yet Thieves break in to steal the gold.
— Anonymous
OLD MOTHER TWITCHETT
Old Mother Twitchett had one eye
And a tail that she let fly;
Every time she jumped a gap
A bit of her tail was caught in a trap.
— Anonymous
DADDY LONGLEGS
Long legs, crooked thighs,
Little head and no eyes –
What am I?
— Anonymous
A GIRL
There was a girl in our town,
Silk an’ satin was her gown,
Silk an’ satin, gold an’ velvet,
Guess her name, for thrice I’ve telled it.
— Anonymous
OLD SMOKY
Make three fourths of a cross
And a circle complete,
And let two semicircles
On a perpendicular meet;
Next add a triangle
That stands on two feet;
Next, two semicircles
And a circle complete.
— Anonymous
BUCKY
As soft as silk,
As white as milk,
As bitter as gall,
A thick brown wall,
And a green coat covers all.
— Anonymous
LITTLE NANCY
Little Nancy Endicott
In a while petticoat
And a red nose –
The longer she stands,
The shorter she grows.
— Anonymous
UPROOTED
Dies in heat,
Lives in chill,
Grows with its root
Running uphill.
— Anonymous
ARRESTED
Formed long ago, yet made today,
Employed while others sleep;
What few would like to give away
Nor any wish to keep.
— Anonymous
TEASE
Thomas O’Tattamus took two T’s
To tie two tups to two tall trees.
To frighten the terrible Thomas O’Tattamus,
Tell me how many T’s are in these!
— Anonymous
A RING
Flour of England, fruit of Spain
Met together in a shower of rain;
Put in a bag tied round with a string –
If you’ll tell me this riddle I’ll give you a ring.
— Anonymous
MY LITTLE NUT TREE
I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear.
The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to marry me,
All for the sake of
My little nut tree.
Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.
I said, “So fair a princess
Never did I see;
I’ll give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree.
— Anonymous
ANSWERS:
The first riddle is not overtly a question, but “Humpty Dumpty,” as we all know, or ought to know, is an egg, as is “The Vault.”
“Old Mother Twitchett” is a needle and thread.
“Daddy Longlegs” Is a pair of tongs.
The lass in “A Girl” is named Ann.
The answer to “Old Smoky” is purportedly tobacco, although I personally have a hard time visualizing it.
“Bucky” is a horse chestnut.
“Little Nancy” is a candle.
“Uprooted” is an icicle.
“Arrested” is a bed.
The answer to “Tease” is the numeral 2.
“A Ring”: is a plum pudding.
Finally, the princess in “My Little Nut Tree” is Catharine of Aragon who became the first wife of Henry VIII of England. Knowing that, it takes little imagination to understand what the nut tree is.
Many years ago I was studying William Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Mother Goose, and I ran across the quatrain that I used as an epigraph in the following puzzle poem:
THE CAT, THE MAID, AND THE GENTLEMAN
Hevera, devera, dick —
Eight, nine, ten —
That's how they count their sheep,
These Westmorelandmen.
A maid and a cat lived in a sty,
(The Devil you know dwells down below),
A gentleman came and caught la eye.
He stopped and stared and wondered why
The maid and the cat lived in the sty,
Hevera devera fo la fo.
The cat and the maid were eating eggs,
(The Devil of course dines down below)
And dancing about on barrels and kegs.
The gentleman asked if it hurt fo legs
To be dancing about while eating eggs,
Hevera devera fo la fo.
The maid and the cat were smirched with dirt,
(The Devil wears ashes down below).
"No," la replied, "it does not hurt
My legs if I keep my prancing curt
And cover myself with lots of dirt,"
Hevera devera fo la fo.
"La, marry me," the gentleman said,
("The Devil will marry us down below.")
"I'd be most pleased if we were wed
At midnight, be we quick or dead.
I'll marry thee merrily, sir," la said,
Hevera devera fo la fo.
They were betrothed eight days all told,
(The Devil was waiting down below),
La and the gentleman so bold.
The deveral sun set dark and cold,
And they were wed as the church bell tolled
Hevera! devera! fo! la! fo!
The cat (not maid) and the gentleman were
Wed by the Devil down below.
Listen and you may hear fo purr
(Not la, for who could care for her?)
The couple are gay, or at least they were,
Hevera devera fo la fo.
Here are some other of my original riddles; as in the series of traditional riddle poems, the answers will be found at the end:
RED
I get redder blow by blow
When the wind is furious
Or a neighbor thinks I grow
A little bit too curious.
What am I?
NAMESAKE
My name may have a larger field
Than I myself when I am healed,
And you will never see me primp,
For it might make my soul go limp
And send a woman to harass
If I should measure it in glass.
What am I?
CORNERED
There is no female in its lot
To affix approval
To containers on the spot
Or see to the removal
Of its contents which remain,
For the nonce at least,
Protected from the wind and rain
And from the barking beast.
What is it?
FALSE IRE
People may poo-poo my name,
For half of it is fake.
They make me froth, nevertheless,
Like spindrift on a lake.
What am I?
As in “Humpty Dumpty,” no overt question is posed in “The Cat, the Maid, and the Gentleman”; the puzzle is in the terms “fo” and “la” — the reader must figure out who they are. The answer is simpler than it looks: “fo” means “the former,” and “la” means, “the latter.”
The answer to “Red” is a nose.
“Namesake” is a foot.
A mailbox will be found “Cornered” on the street, sometimes.
The answer to “False Ire” is shampoo.
Suggested Writing Assignment
Write a riddle in rhyme and meter.
NOTE 1:
“Pentacles” is from the series Seasons of the Blood by Lewis Turco, to be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007.
NOTE 2: All those poems contained in this essay that are designated as versions written by Wesli Court, and the essay itself, are copyrighted © 2012 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced by any means anywhere without written permission of the author. Except for “The Riddle of the Sphinx” and “The Two Sisters,” all poems and versions by Wesli Court are available in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. All other poems are copyrighted by their authors and all rights are reserved by them.
Form of the Week 14: Bad Poems
On November 16, 1972, while I was still teaching at the S.U.N.Y. College at Oswego, an interview I did for the student newspaper The Oswegonian was published. The interviewer was Peter Bernhardt, and at one point he asked me, “Last year you and one of your students, P. J. O'Brien, gave a reading of nothing but bad poems, mostly by nineteenth century authors. What brought that on?”
I replied, “I don't know what brought it on. I've very often read bad poetry to my classes. It's a good thing to read, for instance, to an introduction to poetry class because many students feel they don't know what a bad poem is. Or a good poem, for that matter. How do you tell? Well, if you read a really bad poem, an obviously bad poem, that gives the students a water mark or, I should say, a low water mark, They can then judge other poems according to how much higher they rise above the low water mark.
“With regard to creative writing classes, I find that young people despair that they're ever going to turn into competent writers. If I read them a bad poem I can say, ‘Look, you're already better than this.’"
Without a doubt one of the bad poems I read to my classes in those days was by Walt Whitman. Before he discovered that prose could be a vehicle for poetry, as in the Bible, Walt Whitman wrote very bad metrical verse and published it in the pages of the Brooklyn Eagle; here is The Good Gray Poet’s very worst rhymed and metered poem (his best is “O Captain! My Captain!):
OLD GRIMES
He lived at peace with all mankind,
In friendship he was true;
His coat had pocket-holes behind,
His pantaloons were blue.
Unharmed, the sin which earth pollutes
He passed securely o’er, —
And never wore a pair of boots
For thirty years or more.
Walt Whitman
Of course, any poet may write a bad poem, or at least a bad line now and again, and many do:
R.I.P. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
August 4, 1792-July 8, 1822
He said to the skylark, “bird thou never wert,”
A line for which no poet would give his shirt,
Nor even a pair of socks that were worn and smelly.
Nevertheless, we honor Percy Shelley.
Wesli Court
A poet I used to know who was given to overwriting pronounced the word poem as though it were spelled poyme. Unfortunately, not everyone can pull off just writing a poem, and they wind up underwriting a pome. Rather a large number of people, poetasters they are called, can't even rise to that level, and they write a peom. Still others have no conception of what a poem actually is, and they write somep'n else. Those are the categories of my Turco’s Instant Critical System:
Poyme
Poem
Pome
Peom
Somep'n Else
A famous bad poem is “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer; why is it a bad poem? Because the rhymes are trite, the sentiment is sentimentality, and the images are ridiculous:
TREES
By Joyce Kilmer
Drawings by Socrates Samson
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree,
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Suggested writing assignment:
Write a bad poem.
November 13, 2014 in Bad Poetry, Commentary, Criticism, Humor & Satire, Literature, Poems, Poetry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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