Governor Paul Le Page of Maine
ANNIE FINCH
Averse1 to logic, Annie Finch
In argument won’t give an inch.
She’ll spar and duck and even clinch —
But change her mind? You’d need a winch. 2
____
1Pun intended.
2Subliminal pun: because of her birth date, apparently, Annie thinks she’s a witch.
R. I. P. GOVERNOR PAUL LE PAGE OF MAINE
The minority executive who said the N.A.A.C.P. can “kiss my butt!“ on Martin Luther King’s birthday.
Here lies “Kiss My Butt” Le Page —
The Right Wing thinks he’s all the rage,
But should he analyze a poll
It’s certain he would lose the whole.
BUTLER BASKETBALL
Upon the Occasion of UConn’s Winning its Third National NCAA Basketball Men’s Championship on April 5th, 2011.
There once was a coach named Calhoun
Who pricked an enormous balloon
When he changed poor old Butler
Back into a scuttler
And returned the team to its cocoon.
THE BALLAD OF LAKE WOBEGON
“I think he's losing it: his monologues recently often center on fart jokes or adolescent moonings over girls in grade school.” — A native Minnesotan.
A fellow named Garrison Keillor
Decided to be the big dealer
Of free public verse
More prolix than terse
And full of quotidian flea-lore.
He delved in review books to find
Material that might be mined
And put out to flog
On his PBS blog
Where “excellence” was undefined.
The peots he chose were doggone
Happy to be Wobegon —
They fawned willy-nilly
And, though they were silly,
They always had peoms to pawn.
The songs that he loved were so bad
They smelled like a midden of shad
But sounded much worse
Than even his verse
And drove musicologists mad:
One, “Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul,” fell
As flat as a pancake in Hell.
Folks wanted to scoff,
But it so turned them off
That they spewed and began to expel,
But he played it again the next day!
The hairs of his hearers turned gray,
Except for some mules
Who giggled like fools
And asses that started to bray.
And, speaking of smells, he told jokes
That painted a picture in strokes
So windy and gassy
They didn’t sound classy
To even some Wobegon folks.
The stories he told of the maids
He’d known in his earlier grades
Were terribly sad —
No longer a lad,
He still can’t get over their braids.
Beware of the man who is hairy, son,
He might be an ogre or fairy, son.
If he proffers a feeler
He might be a Keillor
Of quality — you must be wary, son.
MAYDAY 2011
Osama bin Laden was shot in the head –
Osama bin Laden is Laden with lead!
Scatter the atoms of evil Osama!
Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna, Obama!
THE LAST TRUMP
The Donald says he’s gonna pump
Moola from his moola dump
Into a run Till Obama’s undone –
We hope we achieve the last Trump.
POTWASHER
Sam Gwynn calls no kettle black
Because it IS, as is well known,
But he won't scour it till it's back
To being picked clean as a bone.
July 22, 2011
PAUL LAND
Paul Land
Fell out of bed.
How did Paul land,
Upon his head?
Paul Land landed
On his arm
Which bruised him but
Did little harm.
Where did Paul head?
He went to hear
Speakers speaking
With his ear
For he could listen
As Paul Land’s head
Was not his landing
When he fell from bed.
STATE PENN IMPENDING
There once was a coach named Paterno
Whose aide was discovered insterno.
He told not a soul —
Merely plugged up that hole
With a silence that loosed an Inferno.
SANDUSKY Q-T
There once was a jock named McQueary
Who caught a compeer acting queerly.
He told Joe Paterno
Who said of this porno,
“I’ll go to the dean with your query.”
FISHY FRED
There once was a fool named Zarguna
Who hadn’t the brains of a tuna,
So he took a great notion
To jump in the ocean
And enter a school off Laguna.
OUR CHILDHOOD RADIO HERO
“Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy”
There once was a writer named Black
Who seldom took critical flack:
His nom-de-plume “Armstrong”
Made us think we were not wrong
To believe he’s the offspring of “Jack.”
TEA PARTIER
Sam Gwynn has a buddy, Steve Baker,
A “Christian,” he says, but a faker.
Down deep in his gut
He hated black butt,
He’d dishit, but he was no taker.
The First Review of The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition
Martha Eshleman Smith e-mailed me today, December 29, 2011, to tell me that she had received her copy of the fourth edition of The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition from Amazon.com, and that she had posted a review on the Amazon web site. It’s a five-star review, and I thank her profusely for it, but there are a few things I’d like to correct in it, or comment upon.
A few typos, first: “typological” level should read “typographical,” and Martha means “Berryman” when she says “Berrymore.” She says that “The format of the description of each form is unchanged from the prior editions,” but that isn’t always the case. For instance, the description of the ghazal is quite different, much expanded.
Also, Martha says that “gnome or gnomic don’t appear in the general index of this edition…,” and that’s true, but that’s because a “gnome” is defined in The Book of Literary Terms, the companion volume of The Book of Forms as “an apothegm or truism, q.v., sometimes in rhyming form. Some ‘Gnomic Verses’ may be found in … The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, … under the heading of englyn cyrch.” The “gnome” is not a verse form, so the term doesn’t appear in the new Fourth Edition; however, each “gnome” I’ve been publishing in my blog “Poetics and Ruminations” at www.lewisturco.net, consists of a group of six “tailgaters,” and the tailgater is a verse form which appears on page 360 of the Fourth Edition – it was a late addition.
Martha also says, “I would like to see the book have a perpetual supplement available on the web. And hope that Lewis Turco has the health and interest to produce a 5th edition that expands into the world forms entering English poetry, e.g. the Burmese climbing rhyme.” The idea behind The Book of Forms has always been to include those forms that have been used in English in the past. I’m afraid I haven’t run into any English examples of Burmese forms so far.
My publisher isn’t going to be interested in doing another edition for at least ten years. I have worked on The Book of Forms now for more than a half-century, since I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa in 1959. If I’m still around in ten years I doubt I’ll be interested in, or able to produce, a fifth edition. However, as I did for the third edition, I will very likely post a few corrections to this one on my blog titled, “Odd and Invented Forms.” My editors and I labored intensively over our proofreading, but there are bound to be errors cropping up anyway; I’ll appreciate anyone sending me at [email protected] notice of those they find.
Thank you again, Martha.
December 29, 2011 in Announcements, Books, Commentary, Corrections, Correspondence, Verse forms | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: verse forms