Obscure poetry

Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes – Harry Graham

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I was rummaging through some old books this weekend and I came across my Grandparents’ old copy of Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes by Col. D. Streamer (Harry Graham).

Have you heard of it? If not, you’re about to. As part of my Obscure Poetry journey I thought I’d share some of my favourite rhymes with you.

Ruthless Rhymes1 (1)

But first, a little background. Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes was published in 1898 and is full of delightfully cruel little rhymes, which are to the point and completely without moral.

The book was described in an editorial by the Times as embodying a world where ‘there are no values nor standards of conduct or feeling, and where the plainest sense is the plainest nonsense.’

Now, on with the rhymes. Enjoy!

Impetuous Samuel
Sam had spirits naught could check,
And to-day, at breakfast, he
Broke his baby sister’s neck,
So he shan’t have jam for tea!

The Stern Parent
Father heard his Children scream,
So he threw them in the stream,
Saying, as he drowned the third,
“Children should be seen, not heard!”

Nb I once read this poem (The Stern Parent) as part of my primary school’s Christmas production. My choice. I don’t think the teachers approved.

Nurse’s Mistake
Nurse, who peppered baby’s face
(She mistook it for a muffin),
Held her tongue and kept her place,
“Laying low and sayin’ nuffin’”;
Mother, seeing baby blinded,
Said, “Oh, nurse, how absent-minded!”

The Fond Father
Of Baby I was very fond,
She’d won her father’s heart;
So, when she fell into the pond,
It gave me quite a start.

Misfortunes Never Come Singly
Making toast at the fireside,
Nurse fell in the grate and died;
And, what makes it ten times worse,
All the toast was burned with nurse.

I remember often reading these as a child, and pretending to find them funny to impress the adults, while all the while puzzling over why having jam taken away was a punishment.

As an adult I’m able to appreciate how bluntly hilarious and ahead of their time they are.

Oh, one more thing, the illustrations are great!

graham-quiet-fun

‘The provisional government is an egg’ – Ross Sutherland

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I know I’ve been a little quiet of late but I’m trying to get back on track. Had a very busy July, with work, and a social life which seemed to spring from nowhere, and now I’m planning for an exciting couple of weeks InterRailling in Europe. But I will get a few posts done before hand. This one included.

So here it is, my next stop on the obscure poetry train, translation poetry!

I got the idea from a poetry evening I went to attended by Ross Sutherland. If you’re not familiar with Sutherland, you must check out some of his work, he’s brilliant, and absolutely hilarious.

The idea is to take a poem, and feed it through a piece of translation software until the original meaning is lost in translation errors. His manuscript National Language can be found here.

252294_458007547543644_1272932445_nI had a play around with Bing translator and one of my favourite poems – Rudyard Kipling’s The Way through the Woods . I didn’t run it through hundreds of times like Sutherland did, nor did I take words out in between translations and manipulate it in that way. I ran it through about 10 times, and then tidied the text up. If I have more time I might try following Sutherland’s process a little more carefully, but I’m still quite happy with the result I got from this one.

This is the original:

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

And here is my mistranslated version:

They are out of the way, Les.
More than 70 years ago.
Gone back to the weather and the rain.
You would never know now
That once a forest was in the way.
Trees were planted
Based on the Bush administration;
And the heath’s pale sea anemones.
Only a custodian can see the Paluomakefu school.
The badgers do not.
At the end of the summer night,
A trout pond loops in the air conditioning.
And the Colleague Otter?
Well, he does not like the woods.
Therefore, some are searching.
Listen to your horse,
Dress pink,
Ride.
Solitodis Dim.
They know.
Take the old forest road.
There is no forest.

As always I had great fun playing around with this, although it did take me a little while to find some software which was unsophisticated enough to sufficiently obscure the meaning (sorry Bing). I would suggest trying this method out yourself if you’ve enjoyed any of the other methods I’ve tried out.

Once again, any suggestions for future blog posts are much appreciated 🙂

‘Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.’ — Robert Frost

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Found prose poetry.

I actually stumbled across this idea on a teaching forum as a suggested homework for English literature students, still I liked the idea and gave it a go. As with all my obscure poetry so far, it’s fairly simple, but I think gives you a little more opportunity for being yourself than some of my past ideas.

The model is as follows: choose a piece of prose fiction; select a passage from the text; identify important words, phrases and sentences; arrange these excerpts into a poem. I think you can be fairly unrestrained with this sort of method, you could try choosing a specific structure and molding the text, or using free verse.  It’s also fine to rearrange order, wording and phrases, do whatever sounds most appealing to you.

I opted to use free verse and selected the final paragraphs from both books.

Here are the results:

shepard_fairey_george_orwell_1984

1984 — George Orwell

He gazed up. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

He gazed up.
What kind of
Cruel, stubborn smile
as hidden beneath the dark moustache?
He had learned.
Tears trickled down his nose.
Everything was all right,
He had won the struggle,
He loved Big Brother.

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Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

“But soon,” he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”

He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

Soon I shall die.
I will no longer feel
these burning miseries,
the torturing flames.
My light will fade,
My ashes swept into the wind.
I will sleep.
Borne away by the waves,
Lost in the darkness.
Farewell.

My latest find is possibly my favourite so far, I really liked the freedom of constructing a poem in this way permitted me. If you find yourself at a loose end one afternoon give it a go, I’d love to see other people’s results.

As always, any suggestions for future methods would be greatly appreciated 🙂

“I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don’t budge though armies cross them.” ― Virginia Woolf

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Obscure poetry round two – Final sentence poetry.

I was recommended this method of constructing poetry by a friend of a friend, and I instantly loved it! The idea is to choose a book, and construct a poem by taking the final sentence from each chapter, starting at the back and working forwards

I took a while browsing through the books at home and in the office before I chose two to use that I liked the look of, and then used a long train journey to London to construct my poetry. The main issue I encountered was with overly long sentences, I took each of these as they came, cutting some of them down, or running them across two lines, depending on what I thought sounded better.

The following are the end result:

1134855Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree – Albert Wendt

Forgive dear reader please confession
Of Humble man who is man got religion.
All is well in Lava,
So spake the Flying-Fox.
She visits her husband’s grave at Magiagi every Saturday afternoon,
We crucified him.
It is only a saint they are burying,
The only one you’ve got down is only a pampered nag.
If mine father mother brother and captain see me now;
He held up his hand proudly.
Mauga stood crowned by the last rays of the setting sun.

Billy Liar – Keith WaterhouseImage

I began the slow walk home,
I did not have the courage to turn around and look at my mother.
I put out the light.
The idea of ever seeing Stamp again,
Filled me with horror.
I beckoned to Liz.
I did not stop running until I was clear of Clogiron Lane,
And whistled all the way down the Arcade,
Getting the Ambrosian repeater gun into position.
And even while I was burying the calenders the feeling was still with me.
Why don’t you tell the boring little man to stick the job up his jacksy?
I watched her down Market Street until the swinging of her skirt was out of sight,
And went into the office.
Get stuffed.
I wondered what I was going to do about everything.

Again I had a lot of fun playing around with these and decided to spread the word a little further, this time to a friend who’s currently living over in Australia. His taste in books is a little unusual, but I really liked what he came up with:

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John Dies at the End – David Wong

Your ball.
I knew, of course, that it never, ever would.
I turned to John to tell him to find something sharp.
What’s in it?
I can’t believe you just said that,
One way or another,
This is gonna be the end.
I would have put a bullet in my own skull one minute later.
I snapped the padlock shut,
Then trudged inside the house.
Now, this is going to sound crazy…
Then in the fall, everything went to hell,
He then stabbed Xorox in the belly with her own hand.
Vegas was just the beginning.
Wanna play hockey?
And then came the voices.
I got nothing else out of her the rest of the night.
Do you have your ATM card?
Please come with me, sir.
I locked up and went to bed.

I’d recommend any of you creative types out there to give this a go, the method doesn’t really require a lot of effort at all, and I found some of the sentences worked together really well.

I’ve been given some great suggestions so far for other methods to include on my obscure poetry journey, so please feel free to send me any other ideas you might have.