Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Wikimedia Commons)
There was an impromptu poetry ‘happening’ over the weekend in the comments section of a post in Speckled dish. It started when Dominica posted an oaty recension of a poem by William Carlos Williams, which was quickly followed by flapjack burlesques of (at last count) Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, Paul Eluard, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ogden Nash, Marianne Moore, and (this last one took me a moment to identify!) Rudyard Kipling.
Any takers?
Gerry says:
How is a non-literary person like myself supposed to make sense of all of that. It seems wonderful, though I really do need links and notes.January 22nd, 2008 at 12:24 AM
Jeff says:
I bet Dominica would say the same about Michael's "circuit board layout":http://www.handmeon.com/post/show/329 for Wallbot. And I think Dwight sent off a bunch of Handmeon tags to Brazil last month. How's your Portuguese?January 22nd, 2008 at 02:24 PM
Gerry says:
Maybe, but my point is a little different. I really want to learn more about it, but wouldn't want to intrude on what I don't really understand very deeply. The WalBot can be enjoyed whether or not you can understand the circuit diagram, and you can learn about making circuits too. I realize that different handmeon objects will be different in these ways, I'm just wondering about the differing statuses of comments. If I were to ask about the sources and references in the comments, it would be nice if the host could do something more interesting that deleting them. Maybe keep then in a different space. Or is that what remarks are intended for?January 23rd, 2008 at 07:09 AM
Jeff says:
OK, I'm not going to hit all your points first time, because there are a lot of interesting issues intertwined here.
'Remarks' on objects are kind of a mess. They were intended to permit general non-sojourn-specific remarks about the object on the order of "I think that is not really a ceremonial battle shield but an early aboriginal surfboard." But they have been used more often as a communication mechanism with the current owner. Something that was necessary in part because there was no way to initiate a chat with someone that hadn't bookmarked you. We just deployed a new release that frees up chatting considerably (as the default user preference, anyway.) Which _also_ makes it possible to send a chat message to the sojourn host saying something like "Hey could you provide a key to those quotations for the rest of us?"
We are planning to introduce (this week or early next week) the ability to "promote" memorable comments to "contributions" (essentially crating a "different space" but at the same time preserving the original context for anyone who is interested. The intent is to take the pressure off comments to always be "memorable" and also to create a natural flow from process to product, so that the more memorable stuff can be retained and presented to later visitors. (Many online communities have no means of easily consolidating their learning into monuments that become community assets - they remain in folk memory. It is all process, and no product.)
Of course, hosts will create different micro-cultures proper to their sojourns, and I think this is a good thing. That could make some sojourns seem 'snobby'. And Americans tend to be really sensitive about certain forms of elitism (though, I would argue, systematically blind about others.) Since I have never seen an episode of "Cheers" or "NYPD Blue" or "Seinfeld", I probably wouldn't be able to follow a game of allusions based on them. I might feel a little bit shy about asking "Who's Gilligan?". (I couldn't even remember the name of "Seinfeld, but finally, after a half dozen tries, managed to have it come up ranked third on a google search for "famous television show new-york cancelled cynical", which captures the sum total of my knowledge about it. Hows that for google-fu?) But twentieth century poetry is prime time for me. I know the characters.
This raises a potentially touchy issue - if the site is to be at all interesting and diverse, there will inevitably be some nooks and crannies in which we are a bit at sea. I guess the question is whether this is something we should embrace or something we should seek to minimize? Having lived as an expat, I know that, while it is stimulating to participate in a multi-cultural conversation, it is also something of a relief to slip back into a mode where in which every idiom, allusion and assumption doesn't need to be translated and explained. In fact, I think I may have learned more about France listening to the French talk among themselves, than when they tried to stopped to explain things to me. But I spent a lot of time being confused, and there was a lot that I just had to accept that I simply didn't understand. I think I got used to the sensation of incomprehension and even came to enjoy it.
That being said, I would be happy to make a key to the parody quotations and will post it as a comment on Dominica's original post.
January 23rd, 2008 at 01:29 PM
Jeff says:
Skeleton Key to the Oaten Flute
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
---
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wallace Stevens, from 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
---
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
---
La terre est bleue comme une orange
Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas
The earth is blue like an orange
Never an error, words do not lie
Paul Elouard, from La terre est bleue comme une orange
---
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land
---
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
but the secret sits in the middle and knows.
Robert Frost
---
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other milk
Ogden Nash
---
One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it.
Marianne Moore, from Poetry
---
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from The Charge of the Light Brigade
January 23rd, 2008 at 09:07 PM