Continuing our various literary extravagances, we move from prose to poetry, and this PRIZE COMPETITION.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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... for he on fruit-fly chow hath fed, and released the intracellular calcium stores of paradise.
- Date:
- Thursday, 04 Dec ember 2008 - 09:52 UTC
I am offering a copy of Siege of Stars to the first person who can tell me the authors or titles, or both, of the poems whence the following extracts come, and the common theme that links all these extracts, except one; and what that exception is.
As there is a prize, googling will be between you and your own conscience.
1. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire2. I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion
3. On the Coast of Coromandel, where the early pumpkins blow.
4. My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.5. The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits like honey to the throat6. Someone had blundered.
7. What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?8. Thynke howe short tyme thou hast abyden here.
Thy place is bygged above the sterres clere,
Noon erthly palys wrought in so statly wyse.9. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy land!10. Fully awake, imperative,
a genetic reaction
and sunlight rainbows through Fresnel hair:
a sheen of perspiration,
a tectonic slowing;
and we are still once more.Last updated: Thursday, 04 Dec 2008 - 09:52 UTC
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Comments
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Too difficult for me, Henry. I shall have to resort to more conventional means of procurement. Beautiful words, though – thank you!
You’ve missed that most beautiful of biological poems:
O Octopus, I begs
Is them arms, or is them legs?
Meme overload, so I’ll have to just buy Siege of Stars the old-fashioned way. :-)
Though I think number 2 is Dowson. I can’t be a*$ed to look up the Latin title.
no. 10 is that poem by Richard on LabLit..
..I’d have to cheat for the rest, I’m afraid.
I’m pretty sure that 6 is from Tennyson – “The Charge of the Light Brigade”…
But I think it is usually written as “Blunder’d” for the sake of the scansion.
Just blame the school I went to…. :-)
Going for the low-hanging fruit once again:
3 continues “in the middle of the woods/lived the yonghy-bongy-bo/two old chairs and half a candle” but I can’t remember either the title (unless the title is “yonghy-bongy-bo”) or the author.
6 is definitely from Charge of the Light Brigade.
7 is from Keats. I’m less sure of the title, but I know it’s an Ode to something or another.
9 is from Edgar Allen Poe’s “To Helen”
I’m incapable of recognizing any but #7’s Ode to a Grecian Urn and #3, and I had to cheat and slap myself on the forehead at that for the author; would they all be in your Oxford Book of English Verse but the one purportedly by Richard?
On the one hand this is too hard for me, and on the other I’m damn well going to buy Siege of Stars so don’t want to win. So here are my guesses (some of whch I know to be true) in the hope that they help anyone out there who actually wants to win this.
Those are my guesses. I’m thinking that maybe 6-7 are right.
Ah, but I see Chris doesn’t believe me. So here’s the proof.
And yes, I do feel slightly disturbed by the fact that I know that one, but didn’t know any of the others..
You’re all doing really well. Play up, play up, and play the game!
would they all be in your Oxford Book of English Verse but the one purportedly by Richard?
That’s not the connection.
I think I can do the connection. I believe that the poets’ cats have all contributed to Poetry for Cats, by Henry Beard. (Translated by the Editor’s
cat.)
That isn’t it, either – though Poetry for Cats is indeed a masterpaws of kitty lit.
from the above tome I give you:
Grendel’s Dog, from Beocat
Brave Beocat, brood-kit of Ecgthmeow,
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar in whose high halls
He mauled without mercy many fat mice,
Night did not find napping nor snack-feasting.
The wary war-cat, whiskered paw-wielder,
Bearer of the burnished neck-belt, gold-braided collar band,
Feller of fleas fatal, too, to ticks,
The work of wonder-smiths, woven with witches’ charms,
Sat upon the throne-seat his ears like sword-points
Upraised, sharp-tipped, listening for peril-sounds,
When he heard from the moor-hill howls of the hell-hound,
Gruesome hunger-grunts of Grendel’s Great Dane,
Deadly doom-mutt, dread demon-dog.
Then boasted Beocat, noble battle-kitten,
Bane of barrow-bunnies, bold seeker of nest-booty:
“If hand of man unhasped the heavy hall-door
And freed me to frolic forth to fight the fang-bearing fiend,
I would lay the whelpling low with lethal claw-blows;
Fur would fly and the foe would taste death-food.
But resounding snooze-noise, stern slumber-thunder,
Nose-music of men snoring mead-hammered in the wine-hall,
Fills me with sorrow-feeling for Fate does not see fit
To send some fingered folk to lift the firm-fastened latch
That I might go grapple with the grim ghoul-pooch.”
Thus spoke the mouse-shredder, hunter of hall-pests,
Short-haired Hrodent-slayer, greatest of the pussy-Geats.
My favourite is ‘On First Looking Into Clarke’s Larder’ by John Keats’ cat.
Number 4 is from Siegfried Sassoon’s In Me, Past, Present, and Future Meet. Great War poets, for the weepy win.
For catharsis, I’d choose them over alcohol or psychotherapy
or bloggingany day.10. Philip Larkin
I wouldn’t take that lying down, Richard.
I think if it were me I’d be flattered.
Damn. I should have got 4. I once played Siegfried Sassoon in a school play.
Probably in the minority here, but I’m not a fan of Larkin, sorry.
Fan of Larkin’s? Now I’m not sure. I was unsettled this morning by the announcement board at the university entrance: The Medical School celebrates it’s 40th anniversary
My day is ruined.
Nice of the Medical School to celebrate Herbert J Leder’s horror film about an indestructible and cursed statue (also known as Curse of the Golem and Der Golem lebt!) staring a youthful Roddy McDowall. But I’m afraid they are a year too late even if they are dating from the US release.
it’s ?
It!
I suppose I should alert the proper authority’s. Might be depressing if they don’t know what I’m on about, or perhaps they’ll attribute my tetchiness to the influence of my undergraduate alma mater.
Bullets can’t kill it! Fire can’t burn it! Water can’t drown it! How can we destroy IT before IT destroys us?
This has gone dangerously off topic. Let’s get back to the poetry. I’ve now read Richard’s poem and agree that it isn’t much like Larkin.
All English poets so far, except for the American, Poe.
Quoth the Raven….
… nevermore!
I thought I’d recognised the first one but I was wrong, oh so wrong…. but I liked the full version. Thanks Henry for giving me a new poet (or new and new… but you know :) ) It reminded me of the Auden poem, Funeral blues, kind of…
Personally I miss Shakespeare, my only hope to find one writer in all of ten ;) or any Swedish ones, but I fear that the translation of poems is never really the same.
Asa, I suspect that were you to conduct the same exercise, (and you’d been invited to, after all), we all might have a much harder time of it.
Heather> haha, you mean if I were to post Swedish poems? [yeah, that would be a challenge] Alas I have no Swedish books of poetry in my new country… I think.
Other books however, I do have. Hm, maybe I should try and make a mix of “Swedish AND English books”?! Then again, some things are just too complicated ;)
And yes, I know about the invite – I will see what the weekend makes of it. Maybe ten books will appear on a blogg near you very soon :)
Solutions time – I think my copy of Siege of Stars is safe. Most of you got something, but nobody got everything. Although some of you got quite close to the connection, nobody nailed it. The odd one out is indeed RPG’s poem Morning. All the others I’m using as chapter-headings in my bonkbusting Sigil trilogy.
1. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire
Gray’s Allergy in a Country Churchyard.
2. I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion
Ernest Dowson, Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
3. On the Coast of Coromandel, where the early pumpkins blow.
Edward Lear, The Coutship of the Yonghy Bonghy Bo
4. My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
Siegfriend Sassoon, In me Past, Present, Future meet
5. The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits like honey to the throat
Chrisna Rosetti, Goblin Market
6. Someone had blundered.
Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
7. What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
8. Thynke howe short tyme thou hast abyden here.
Thy place is bygged above the sterres clere,
Noon erthly palys wrought in so statly wyse.
John Lydgate, Vox Ultima Crucis
9. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy land!
Edgar Allan Poe, To Helen
10. Fully awake, imperative,
a genetic reaction
and sunlight rainbows through Fresnel hair:
a sheen of perspiration,
a tectonic slowing;
and we are still once more.
RPG, Morning
Heh, this is what happens when you fly round the world in a week. You get compared, favorably, with Philip Larkin.
I’m not a huge fan but some of his stuff is quite passable.
I’m sure he’d say the same about you.
:-)
Morning is a lovely poem, and you can read it in full here
Richard does have a sensitive side, but don’t tell everyone. He has a reputation to maintain.
If Larkin said that of me, Heather, I’d be well chuffed!
Henry’s last comment reminds me. Please don’t read Futures this coming week.
No, please do read it. And then send Richard a hankie.