Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, Baltimore, MD: BrickHouse Books, (www.BrickHouseBooks.com) 2012, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-938144-01-1.
The epitaph is lapidary verse; that is, a gravestone inscription (not to be confused with the epigraph). It is one of the two major short forms of satirics, the other being the epigram which has been defined as terse verse with a cutting edge. The clerihew, a particular type of epigram, was invented by E[dmund] Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). It is a quatrain in dipodic [two-beat] meters rhyming aabb, the first line of which is both the title and the name of a person:
SIGMUND FREUD AND KARL JUNG
Sigmund Freud
Became annoyed
When his ego
Sailed to Montego.
Sigmund Freud
Became more annoyed
When his id
Fled to Madrid.
Sigmund Freud
Grew most annoyed
When his superego
Tried to Montenegro.
Sigmund Freud
Was nearly destroyed
When his alter-ego
Showed up in Oswego.
Karl Jung
Found himself among
Archetypes
Of various stripes.
-- Lewis Turco
In 2014, the history of the Clerihew took a curious twist. According to its publisher, the collection of The Lost Clerihews of Paul Ingram, with illustrations by Julia Anderson Miller, [North Liberty, IA: Ice Cube Press, 2014, 146 pp., incl. 128 illus., trade paper, ISBN 97818888160772], by the “Legendary bookseller at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa, Paul Ingram,” came to light after having been “long lost,” apparently in the author’s basement. In his Introduction Ingram says, “I started writing Clerihews about twenty years ago. The process seemed involuntary, rather quick Tourette’s-like explosions bound by rhyme and form. I would speak a name and the rest of the poem would spill from me without careful thought.” Oddly enough, Ingram’s collection begins with this clerihew:
Carl Gustav Jung
Was impressively hung,
Which sorely annoyed
The good Dr. Freud.
Wikipedia says, “E. C. Bentley (10 July 1875 – 30 March 1956) was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics. One of the best known is this (1905):
Sir Christopher Wren
Said, ‘I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul's.’”
Perhaps in my definition above I ought to have said simply “podic” rather than “dipodic,” because Clerihew’s practice was to allow his lines three, or as many as four beats if an author such as Ingram wishes; even I allowed myself three stresses in some of the lines of my examples above. But the inventor of this form was even less strict than the Wikipedia definition, for sometimes Clerihew didn’t write about people:
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
And sometimes personal opinion is more important than biography:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
On occasion fiction overcomes even personal opinion in Clerihew’s epigrams:
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
Clerihew even allowed himself at times to be judgmental:
It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.
But this is a lesson, not an encyclopedia entry, and the book under consideration is certainly a worthy descendent of the work of the English journalist who invented the form, which Ingram stretches to the breaking point on occasion:
Margaret Mead
Used to fart when she peed,
A fact well known
To every Samoan.
Of course, the object of derision in a clerihew must be famous, or at least well-known, if the verselet is going to be effective:
Charles Baudelaire
Picked at his scrotal hair,
And found a weevil
In his Flowers of Evil.
Baudelaire’s reputation has stood the test of time, but others of Ingram’s targets may not be quite so lucky:
Forrest Gump
Told Donald Trump
“You know I like you
We have the same IQ.
Although Clerihew was a journalist, it was not his practice to be historically accurate, as Ingram is well aware:
Rebecca West
Became obsessed,
With the nether smells
Of H. G. Wells.
And
Vivian Vance
Put cheese in her pants,
Both Swiss and Havarti,
When she used to party.
In Jul of 2012 Jack Foley wrote me,
Lew,
Here are some probably objectionable [Clerihews] by Jonathan Williams:
Alma Mahler
could really holler!
On those odd, ur-Freudian occasions when she took it up the butt,
she often hit fortissimo high-C and commenced doing the "Danube Strut."
Leos Janacek
in photographs looks a bloody blank Czech.
His music, as it unfurls,
appeals mostly to squirrels.
Franz Liszt
even played the piano when he pissed.
It was odd to see his piano stool dripping
during performances of Annes de Pelerinage that were
absolutely gripping.
Puccini
is arguably better than zucchini.
But a pound of spinach
could write a better symphony than Zdenek Fibich.
Thus Jonathan Williams from his "Clerihews." Williams comments,
“The clerihew was invented in 1890 by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who was a schoolboy of sixteen at St. Paul's in London when the divine numen of Orpheus struck him. His best one seems to me:
The digestion of Milton
Was unequal to Stilton.
He was only feeling so-so
When he wrote Il Penseroso.
“He never got any better than that, and few people have ever managed to equal him, though such as Auden, John Sparrow, Constant Lambert, James Elroy Flecker, Maurice Hare, and Gavin Ewart have tried. I can recall one sublime effort:
How odd
of God
to choose
the Jews.
“This was written by the now-obscured World War One poet William Norman Ewer (1885-1976). It makes me quote the equally sublime rebuttal by Leo Rosten, (as someone says,) the Yiddishist:
Not odd
of God.
Goyim
Annoy 'im!
“E.C. Bentley went on to Oxford, was a lifelong friend of G.K. Chesterton, wrote editorials for The Daily Telegraph for more than twenty years, and is remembered as the author of the detective novel Trent's Last Case.”
So:
Turco, that crazy fellow Lewis
will sometimes curse and even beshrew us
but mind your manners, you old schoolmarms,
this man wrote The Book of Forms.
— Jack Foley
I replied,
Wouldn't it have worked out better if I'd written The Book of Farms?
Jack said, “I have some sort of precedent. From an old song:
“Just a Love Nest
Cozy and warm
Like a dove nest
Down on a farm
“Here's one for old Jonathan:
Jonathan Williams, lamented, gone,
Had pages he put his pen upon
Now he's in his grave, out he canna step —
He depends on people like me for his rep.”
Of all these examples, the only one that looks like a Clerihew is the “old song” Jack quotes above, but even that is not a precise Clerihew if the current definition of the term is that the first line is only the subject’s name. Very few of the examples above, including those by Bentley, inventor of the form (which has clearly evolved since he wrote his first), are true Clerihews. Here is a Clerihew for Jack:
Jack Foley
Thought he was holy,
But found he was not
When it got too hot.
-- Lewis Turco
And here is his epitaph from Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets2:
R.I.P. JACK FOLEY
August 9, 1940
Here lies Jack Foley
Decomposing slowly.
When he composed faster
It was a disaster.
-- Wesli Court
Jack himself clearly knows how to write a true Clerihew; here are a few by him:
Nina Serrano
doesn’t play the piahno[,]
but she sings with her verses
even when they are curses
Mary Ann Sullivan
is better for you than Serutan[;]
She makes verses and videos that tick-
even though you’re a rather lapsed Cat’lic.
Dana Gioa
will never annoy ya[;]
He’s clever and smart and dutiful
and careful to show why we pity the beautiful
(The second couplet turns into prose like those of Johathan Williams; they are not dipodic.)
Al Young
has a song he’s sung
on pages and stages:
he writes for the ages[.]
Writing Exercise:
Write four or five (or more) Clerihews on your friends’ names, or on any names you choose.
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.
Form of the Week 6: The Prose Poem
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.
CONUNDRUM
Define prose: “Unmetered language.
Define verse: “Metered language.”
Define free verse: “Unmetered metered language.”
The Modes of Writing
What are the “modes” of writing? There are only two: prose and verse. The Oxford English Dictionary defines prose as "The ordinary form of written or spoken language, without metrical structure" [emphasis added], and it defines verse as "a succession of words arranged according to natural or recognized rules of prosody and forming a complete metrical [emphasis added] line. To put it even more simply, prose is unmetered language and verse is metered language.
These are the only two ways in which anything in any genre can be written. Some of the literary genres or "kinds of writing" are fiction, drama, nonfiction, and poetry. Fiction may be written in prose or verse; the same is true of drama, nonfiction, and poetry.
Prosody
In order to create, in order to mold the language, the poet must have some kind of system, or prosody — a theory of poetic composition or organizing principle — within the bounds of which he or she can build the structure of the poem. Form, then, whether it be "internal" and "organic," or "external" and "formal," is of major importance.
Unfortunately, when one says "form" many people think only of some structure that is traditional, such as the sonnet. But every element of language is a form of some kind. The letters of the alphabet are forms, conventions upon which we have agreed in order to communicate. So are words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The poet is interested in all of these things, since his or her medium is language.
The poet may also be interested in sonnets, which are metrical forms, but at the very least he or she is interested in words and in how to put them together in language structures. This is not to say that poetry depends upon a particular organizing principle, a particular prosody, such as rhymed metrical verse. Meter is only one element of verse-mode poetry, and a prosody can be based upon any aspect of language, be it rhythm, or grammar, or figures of speech, or syllables, or words, or letters, or what-have-you. All that is necessary is that the system be unified and coherent, and that the products of the system be successful in terms of the system and in terms of the reader's perception of and response to the system.
Metered Language
"Meter" means "measure," and when one measures a line by counting something in that line, one is writing verse, not prose. In English one generally counts syllables of some sort. If one is counting merely syllables, measuring out a certain number to a line, then one is using syllabic prosody, and one is writing syllabic verse, as the ancient Irish and Welsh poets did.
If one is counting only those syllables which, for some reason, are more heavily emphasized than others, then one is using accentual prosody, and one is writing accentual verse, as the Medieval Anglo-Saxon poets did.
If one is counting not only all the syllables in the line, but all the stressed syllables as well, and arranging them in an alternating pattern of some kind, then one is using accentual-syllabic prosody, and one is writing accentual-syllabic verse, as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare did.
The Rules of Scansion in English Verse
These are the rules governing stress in modern English:
1. In every word of the English language of two or more syllables, at least one syllable will take a stress. If one cannot at first hear the stressing, then one may consult a pronouncing dictionary.
2. Important single-syllable words, particularly verbs and nouns, but also demonstrative pronouns (this, these, that), generally take strong stresses.
3. Unimportant single-syllable words in the sentence, such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns (except demonstrative pronouns) do not take strong stresses, though they may take secondary stresses through promotion or demotion, depending on their position in the sentence or the line of verse.
4. In any series of three unstressed syllables in a line of verse, one of them, generally the middle syllable, will take a secondary stress through promotion, and the promoted syllable will stand in place of a stressed syllable.
5. In any series of three stressed syllables in a line of verse, one of them, generally the middle syllable, will take a secondary stress through demotion, and the demoted syllable will stand in place of an unstressed syllable.
CAN POEMS BE WRITTEN IN PROSE?
Constructional Schemas
Some non-metrical systems for writing poetry are based upon schemas: sets of correlated things such as grammatically parallel sentence structures, and these systems ought properly to be considered as prose prosodies when verse systems are not in use for structuring poems. Parallel sentence structures are constructional schemas, and the prosody that uses them is called grammatical parallelism. One such prosody was practiced by the ancient Hebraic poets who derived their system from the even more ancient Chaldeans.
Grammatical prosodies, then, are really the oldest and simplest systems traditional in the western world, if not in the whole world. The work of the Hebraic poets may be found in English in the Bible; specifically, in the King James version, published in 1611, though other English versions had appeared earlier, and versions in Latin, Greek, French, and other languages circulated in Britain since the middle ages.
Grammatical Parallelism
Parallel structure is the structure of symmetrical lists within the sentence. These lists may be parts of speech, such as infinitives (I like to run, to jump, and to swim); proper nouns, (Alice, Bill, and James like to exercise); prepositions (This is a government of, by, and for the people); phrases (This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people); gerunds (I like running, jumping, and swimming); independent clauses (I came, I saw, I conquered), or any other sentence elements, even compound elements such as subjects and predicates (Alice, Bill, and James like to run, jump, and swim). The controlling word is "symmetrical lists," for one does not write, "I like to run, jumping, and to swim," even though the sentence makes sense. The elements of the list, of the catalogue, must be in the same form.
Probably few readers noticed that there was one paragraph above that was, nevertheless, constructed quite obviously of grammatical parallels. If it is reprinted here and each parallel is isolated, the parallelism will be apparent:
If one is counting merely syllables, measuring out a certain number to a line, then one is using syllabic prosody, and one is writing syllabic verse, as the ancient Irish and Welsh poets did.
If one is counting only those syllables that, for some reason, are more heavily emphasized than others, then one is using accentual prosody, and one is writing accentual verse, as the Medieval Anglo-Saxon poets did.
If one is counting not only all the syllables in the line, but all the stressed syllables as well, and arranging them in an alternating pattern of some kind, then one is using accentual-syllabic prosody, and one is writing accentual-syllabic verse, as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare did.
Poem Analysis 11:
Here is a prose poem; the prose is kept unlineated, but each clause ends with the same prepositional phrase separated from the rest of the sentence by three hiatal dots:
COOL TOMBS
When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes...in the dust, in the cool tombs.
[In the next clause Sandburg added still other techniques from the sonic level of the traditional lyric: internal rhyme, (haw, pawpaw), alliteration (Pocahontas, poplar, pawpaw), assonance, and vocalic and consonantal echo]:
Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember?...in the dust…in the cool tombs.
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns...tell me if the lovers are losers...tell me if any get more than the lovers...in the dust...in the cool tombs.
— Carl Sandburg
There are other parallel structures in this poem besides the refrain: the repetition of phrases, for instance, "tell me if," and the catalogue of actions, "buying," "cheering," "throwing," all borrowed from the practice of the Bible in which there are four major types of parallel grammatical structures that may be isolated: synonymous parallelism, synthetic parallelism, antithetical parallelism, and climactic parallelism:
The synonymous parallel is a line form in a poem written in a symmetrical list of grammatical parallels in which the second half of a clause paraphrases the first half:
The sun is setting; / heaven’s fire flickers in the west.
The synthetic parallel is a line form in a poem written in a symmetrical list of grammatical parallels in which the second half of a colause gives a consequence of the first half:
In the sky there is darkness; / birds settle out of the air.
The antithetical parallel is a line form in a poem written in a symmetrical list of grammatical parallels in which the second half of a clause rebuts the first half:
All things are silent; / the stillness is a tumult.
The climactic parallel is a line form that is the apex of a poem written in a symmetrical list of grammatical parallels in which each succeeding clause in the series builds to a climax:
Night walks out of the mountains to lie upon the land.
In his poem "Chicago," Carl Sandburg combined one technique from the craft of short fiction, the circle-back ending, with a repetitional schema, the refrain, and the parallel structure of the catalogue. The first strophe (section) of the poem reads,
CHICAGO
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
and the last reads,
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth,
half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker,
Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler
to the Nation.
— Carl Sandburg
Clearly, the first strophe is little more than the prose of the last strophe line-phrased or, to use a current term, "lineated"; that is, the dependent clause is lineated according to the phrases of which the clause is comprised. To put it another way, the last strophe is the first strophe unlineated.
We can illustrate by taking an example we used earlier and breaking it up into line phrases so that it will more closely resemble verse — what many people erroneously call "free verse." That phrase is clearly a contradiction in terms, for "verse," in which some sort of syllables are being counted, cannot be free. Lineating a prose passage does not convert it to verse, nor does it convert one genre — fiction, drama, or nonfiction (as in this case) — to the genre of poetry:
If one is counting merely syllables,
measuring out a certain number to a line,
then one is using syllabic prosody,
and one is writing syllabic verse,
as the ancient Irish and Welsh poets did.
If one is counting only those syllables which,
for some reason,
are more heavily emphasized than others,
then one is using accentual prosody,
and one is writing accentual verse,
as the Medieval Anglo-Saxon poets did.
If one is counting not only all the syllables in the line,
but all the stressed syllables as well,
and arranging them
in an alternating pattern of some kind,
then one is using accentual-syllabic prosody,
and one is writing accentual-syllabic verse,
as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare did.
Here is a short poem made of the lines used above to illustrate the four major prose parallels of the Bible:
SERENADE
The sun is setting; heaven's fire flickers in the west.
In the sky there is darkness; birds settle out of the air.
All things are silent; the stillness is a tumult.
Night walks out of the mountains to lie upon the land.
If we were to line-phrase this quatrain, we might fool someone into
believing it is written in some sort of verse mode called "free
verse":
The sun is setting;
heaven's fire flickers in the west.
In the sky there is darkness;
birds settle out of the air.
All things are silent;
the stillness is a tumult.
Night walks out of the mountains
to lie upon the land.
Here is one of the greatest of all sports poems, a catalogue:
NATIONAL PASTIME
Dedicated to Cookie Lavagetto
I hereby establish my own Baseball Hall of Fame.
For alliteration, for example, I enshrine
Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash.
For future fame in other areas:
Albert Schweitzer (St. Louis AL — 1909-1911).
They called him "Cheese," so with him
I further honor Clarence Beers and Sweetbreads Bailey,
Hot Potato Hamlin and Noodles Hahn, Ginger Beaumont,
Sugar Cain and Honey Walker (from Beeville, Texas),
as well as Bob Sturgeon, Oyster Burns, Catfish Hunter,
Sea Lion Hall, and George Haddock, whose locker
was next to Davy Jones's. I add sure fingered
Tom Butters, Peanuts Lowery, Pretzels Puzzullo,
Luke Appling, Eddie Bacon, and Puddin' Head Jones,
George Bone and Stew Bolen, Rabbit Maranville
and Bunny Brief, Dave Brain, and Dodo Bird,
Turkeyfoot Brower, Deerfoot Bay, and Raindeer Killifer.
Since one must be mad or built like a
Bench to play catcher, immortalized also
are Earl Battey and Matt Batts.
A special velvet lined niche for the man
who led the senior circuit in hits in 1926 (with 201):
Glass Arm Eddie Brown.
I add another Brown: Mordecai Peter Centennial
(born, of course, in 1876), also known as
"Three Finger" Brown, because that's how many
he used to throw the ball (229 and 131: lifetime).
But M.P.C. "T.F." Brown must yield his share
of one great gallery in my special Hall to
Christian Frederick Albert John Henry David
Betzel, whom they called "Bruno" for some reason.
My Hall of Fame will house an armory, as some
museums do, for the display of weapons, like
Shotgun Shuba, Gunboat Gumbert,
Boom Boom Beck, Roxy Snipes, Ray Blades, and
Poison Ivy Andrews, who will be endowed with
a glass case all his own. And, of course, a chapel for
Preacher Roe, Deacons Scott, MacFayden,
and Law, Howie Nunn, Johnny Priest,
Maurice Archdeacon, Max Bishop, and Dave Pope.
— H. R. Coursen, Jr.
Suggested Writing Exercise:
Write a sixteen-sentence prose poem, each sentence to consist of independent clauses in pairs utilizing the four parallel Hebraic systems: synonymous parallel; synthetic parallel, antithetical parallel, and climactic parallel (which may contain more than just two clauses in a catalogue).
September 19, 2014 in Commentary, Poetry, Prose poems, Prosody, Verse forms | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: meter, parallel structure, Prose, Verse