Oh shit – we’ve gone and caught adenovirus
Like chickens we must stay inside the coop.
Our family and friends would not admire us
For stinking out the place with garlic soup.
My limbs are like proverbial hadrons
With cumbrous mass that no-one can explain
My nose is blocked, My Kyrie Eleison
Is but a hypophysial refrain.
Now, while it seems perverse, even eccentric
To prosecute my blog in formal rhyme
In sonnet cast, with couplets pentametric,
This is my aim through two thousand and nine.
My life remains, though, various and rich
With thanks to Dr Bora Zivkovic.
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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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New Year Resolution
- Date:
- Sunday, 04 Jan uary 2009 - 20:09 UTC
Last updated: Sunday, 04 Jan 2009 - 20:09 UTC
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Comments
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I see. The Digital Cuttlefish has a rival now.
P.S. How large are your feet?
My feet here are iambic- not for me outlandish tricks
I’ve strayed into heptameter which might be hard to fix.
If not that, size eleven, in the US, 46.
Remember, though, it’s hard to squeeze your iambs into crocs
Anapaests are better but you must have woolly socks.
I’ll give up now. Instead I’ll go and see what’s on the box.
Is two thousand and nine
The year of the rhyme?
“This is my aim through two thousand and nine.”
Good luck with that!
@ Graham:
Rhyme
Is sublime
But metre
Is sweeter
@ Eva
If you’d know the reason why
Then blame it all on Stephen Fry
Whose book ‘The Ode Less travelled’ is
My current squeeze. I said ‘Gee whiz!’
When I received it as a gift
From Mrs Gee, who gives short shrift
To bad quatrains, her heart-rate quickens
And so I have to feed the chickens.
Ahem. Bora’s not the only one responsible for your glorious victory at OpenLab 2008.
There were also a few judges and some sort of editor
trying not to pull her hair out and throw herself, gibbering, off Waterloo Bridgekeeping the whole thing running smoothly.Jenny, you should be in bed. The shades
Of night are drawn on London town: your eyes
Must close now, worries shrivel, pale and fade
Your contribution here will not surprise
Those familiar with your industry.
But yes, You’re right, you surely claim the prize
For all this work, this tedious ministry
Forgive me, then, but I could not resist
A punt at rhyming Bora’s name, to me
A challenge for this humble parodist.
This is my aim through two thousand and nine.
I really don’t blanch very often, Henry, but I did there.
Just by the way, what’re you taking?
Good luck with that Henry – and happy new year! I thought I detected Mr Fry’s influence. I’ve had his book for about a year but am working my way through it in a rather leisurely fashion (though — please don’t tell him — without having done any of the exercises!).
You have set yourself a task there Henry!
Iambic pentameter might be considered a bit lofty in some circles – not to mention being trickier than some to get right… how about trying a bit of doggerel for light relief?
A favourite of mine is a local verse:
“Mountain lambs are sweeter,
Valley lambs are fatter,
Therefore it is meeter,
To feast upon the latter…”
Anyone else got one?
Well, it’s actually by T.L. Peacock, from “the Misfortunes of Elphin”. It’s called “The War-song of Dinas Vawr”, and the first verse goes as follows:
The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deem’d it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met an host and quell’d it;
We forced a strong position
And kill’d the men who held it.
It ends with them returning from their expedition with the King of Dyfed’s head as a trophy (as well as all his livestock).
David – Interesting, I didn’t know that… I’d always thought it was a standalone verse. I suspect that, locally, it has been adopted as a folk verse – hence the corrupted text…
To Amy: Do not blanch. Instead,
Consider why you think that way.
That poems should be viewed with dread,
To dance where angels fear to tread?
In Mr Fry’s prescription, he
Supplants that view: that is to say,
That none should baulk at poetry.
To John: that iambs need to be
So lofty only by disuse.
We’ve let them tumble by the way
Through education poor and loose
That’s killed the gander, and the goose.
And David, in my estimation,
Has had a classical education!
Henry -
Though “lofty” in my estimation,
This does not preclude elation,
My joy at hearing Shakespeare’s form,
Is – I suspect – above the norm.
Don’t despair, though “education”
Threatens to debase the nation,
Those of us with love of scansion,
Will provide a stout reaction!
:-)
@ Henry -
Will you tell us more of this tome of Stephen Fry’s?
(I’m commenting in rhyme; I don’t know whys)
Henry:
Wishing you a happy new year -
Must one rhyme to comment now here?
When learning golf, one first learns all the woods,
The putters, irons, birdies and such stuff
To paint with style it’s simply not enough
To think that random splatters are the goods
Whence art is made. No, one must learn the craft.
In music too, one learns where middle C
Is first located, before one’s symphony
Can be attempted. Other schemes are daft.
Consider: do you school a child in song
By getting them to wail what tunes they like?
You’d sooner send her off on her first bike
Sans stabilizers. No, plainly, this is wrong.
Even the most ephemeral recreation
Is validated by a good foundation.
In similar vein, then, Stephen Fry inquires
Why it is, when poetry is taught,
We’re never asked to pay the simplest thought
To its construction, only to those fires
That lines engender in the teenage breast?
That such emotion causes boys to squirm
And tick the days off to the end of term,
Learning just enough to pass a test,
Is all, it seems that schooling now demands.
A pity, such that no-one now implores
Release of calx from intracell’lar stores.
(I had to get that in – I have my fans).
Such misguided learning, if it deserves the name
Produces less achievement, more of shame.
The consequences, there for all to see,
Are what Fry calls ‘arse-dribble’, ‘wank’ and worse
Conceited masturbation stands for verse,
Narcissistic bombast, poetry.
Like music without harmony or tune
Or, as Robert Frost opined, free verse
Is like tennis with the net down: It’s a curse
Like Beelzebun, the Demon Bun of DOOM
So instead of toil to claim achievement’s prize
We’re fooled to think that anything will do
A moment’s verbal doodling and you’re through
If that’s the case, then one can but despise
The mandarins of modern education
Who’ve soiled the wells of native inspiration.
The Ode Less Travelled is Fry’s apotheosis
A course in verse composed with all his wit,
Charm and obscenity (he uses words like ‘tit’
And ‘arse’ and ‘fuck’ and others of like neurosis
One forgives this man of blazing erudition
His peccadilloes, given that the book
With humour filled, that just a single look
Will have one begging intermission
From jokes – his words – that make your tits explode)
Its pages hold the key that should unlock
(When you’ve got over references to ‘cock’)
Poetry at is source, the mother lode.
Enough! In such enjoyment I’ll not shirk
The quest for lucre. I must return to work.
Ahh Henry, pleased I am to note
That poetry shall not demote
Thine ideals, of filthy lucre most!
To naught, but poor remembered ghost.
Now whither, shall I aim seek
A rhyme with Yoda, as all must speak?
Elsewhere, I´m in admiration
Of your sentiments on education.
More theory taught, haste´s tribulation
More thought practiced, less mem´rization.
When thinking of a rhyme with Master Yoda,
I can think of naught but ‘Ice-Cream Soda’.
Though about posting in rhyme I remain ambival’
It might improve my ill-consider’d drivel
Written in the age of blogs, not papers.
Wii games, rather than physical capers.
A Kindle in place of a stack of books.
Yet I will ignore the derisive looks
And jeers, and eschew these cyber-courses
While instead I go to ride my horses.
One could contemplate such rhymes
Relaxed in a pagoda, sublime.
Pentametric, schmentametric.
As my education was less than classic
My poeticness remains Jurassic.
Iambic,
priapicpielambic.I trump you: mine was Late Cretaceous.
(A word that rhymes well with ‘bodacious’).
Tertiary is the one I’d note,
If I had to place my vote.
Because in fields of education,
It covers two parts of vocation:
Both we who strive for all things college-y
And those with interests in geology!