I have made no secret of my bias towards prose. It is self-evidently the superior form of written composition, unsurpassed in clarity and accuracy. Verse is often constrained by meter, rhyme, and structures that don’t use much of the page. So it vexed me for many years that large swathes of literature were in such an awkward format. This is because of one very silly disconnect that I admittedly should have realized many a year ago. I did finally have the epiphany of what utility verse had while driving down some highway or another listening to audiobooks.
And then it faded to the back of my minds while more pressing matters came to the fore. A recent argument slap fight discussion in the comments about copyright reminded me again. The function of the constraints of verse in line length, meter, and rhyme is to act as a mnemonic. Verse exists not for the sort poetry of the leasure classes, but so that the illiterate storyteller can hold the epic yarn in his brain and retell it at the pace his audience needs to be entertained. Sitting here in a modern environment, especially using a text-based format like this website, I can easily forget that literacy was not the norm. Prose is the superior written form, but it is a bitch to memorize.
So on to introspection. Why did I overlook such an obvious connection for so many years?
My first instinct is to blame the way I was taught. Being a victim graduate of the public school system, I had to contend with instructors whose first priority was not the students. So when the curriculum required they cover verse, they picked examples to work with that were A: short, and B: appealed to the instructor. It would not be a stretch to assume that in most cases, an education degree-holding, usually female, adult will have a different taste in entertainment from pre-teen to teenage students, especially the boys. So when verse came up, we would often get florid little snippets from some eighteenth or nineteenth century fop. To us it was boring and painful. The only good poem (from our perspective) to grace the curriculum was The Raven, which I can probably recite large chunks of from memory to this day.
Now if we had something from the epics like Gilgamesh, Homer, the Eddas, or even Beowulf, the subject matter would have resonated better with our young minds. Unfortunately, those were not composed in anything resembling modern english. With the upswing in general literacy even among the lower classes between Tudor and modern times (due to things like the printing press), the niche for memorized epics went away. No one composed new ones in verse, turning their attentions to the superior written form. Naturally, translations of the existing epic verse were less interested in making them memorizable and instead were for well-educated types to dissect ad nausium. That left the translations not exactly fitting into the verse format, and limping along as not fully realized prose.
Of course, even if there were a modern epic verse, I am now of the mind that if that were given to the english teachers of today, it would be tortured to the point of once again boring the students out of their skulls. That is, if it even made it to the classroom, given the proclivities of ‘educators’ today. As a thought experment, I keep seeing the flaws in such an idea. I toyed with the idea of putting together a sample of what such a poem might look like, and ran into the problem that I do not take readily to verse. Nothing made the page as it fell apart in my head.
This is why I fix computers instead.
With no good way to close out the stream of consciousness ramble, I leave you with Beowulf, in the original English.
Why did I overlook such an obvious connection for so many years?
You never read the Odyssey?
A friend had a Magnavox Odyssey 2.
Also music!
As I type this I’m listening to J Pop which has done wonders for my vocabulary and phrases. However, just like English you get strange construction and literary words and phrases that aren’t commonly used.
And engrish! Who knew “boy” could pronounced as three syllables?
ぼうや!
That guy is drunk AF.
He’s that authentic.
I first read part of Beowulf in junior high as part of an assignment. I went to the library and read the whole thing. That being said, I must still post my own award – winning prose:
ROSES ARE RED
VIOLETS ARE BLUE
BENJAMIN BAGBY
READS BEOWOLF TO YOU
Better than any “first”.
Rhyming is boring but it is neccesary,
People like it easy, no verbal gymnastics
I also feel like certain languages have a much easier time of it.
Romance languages with repetitive gendered word endings for example.
Chicken/Egg.
Yes, but it’s important how the word identifies, regardless of what letters it actually has.
No, what I meant was that maybe the language developed to encase the verbal in that tradition, thus making it ideal for using it.
I got that and agree. Just kidding around.
I wish you had rhymed that comment.
When the vocal strands are fringy
The results are often cringey.
I speculate Yusef drives
Meant nearly what I wrote implies.
He meant that
Rhyming is boring but works the synapses,
People like it easy, no verbal gymnastics
Bingo!
When I took Brit Lit in college, the professor read a little bit of Beowulf to us in the original Old English. My overall impression at the time was that it sounded like a Viking choking on an ox bone. (I much preferred his reading from The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English.) Helping that impression was the professor’s stocky build that made it easy to imagine he might be descended from Vikings. Mr. Bagby’s reading of Beowulf is much more pleasant – not nearly so…rough.
As for poetry, I’m not sure what this says about me, but apart from countless song lyrics (of course,) one of the only poems I can think of that I know almost completely by heart is “Jabberwocky.”
Oddly for me it is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Also some of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Because ain’t nobody got time to memorize The Waste-Land.
One of the books I wish I’d kept from college was my lit book that had all that stuff with the original language on one side of the page and a modern translation on the other.
In some ways I’d think the net might be even handier as you can likely get multiple translations and the original.
But the net isn’t a book that I could read after The CIA ReLeaSes COviD 7.0 anD The MOOn AmISh AaattTack!
>he doesn’t have the entire internet backed up on paper and optical media so that he can stay entertained after an EMP or solar flare
ngmi
also don’t have to worry about sensitivity experts
*and a few limericks (the highest form of the poetic art?) that I shall refrain from reciting.
There once was a man from Nantucket…
The once was a man whose dong was so long…
You are a John Hughes fan?
The only poetry I retained from school was Chartless by Emily Dickinson, My Heart’s In The Highlands by Robert Burns, and about 3/4 of Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Why those particular ones stuck I have absolutely no idea.
Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века,
Все будет так. Исхода нет.
Умрешь, начнешь опять сначала,
И повторится все как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.
And from Austrian poet Ernst Jandl:
Lichtung
Manche meinen lechts und rinks
Kann man nicht velwechsern.
Werch ein Illtum!
Муха, муха на стене
как ты поживаешь?
У меня пистолет.
Бах, бах, мухи нет.
At my nerdiest I could recite The Yarn of the Nancy Bell, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The Raven, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and Gunga Din. I still know the first two, can fumble through most of the third, but only know the first and last few lines of the last two.
So, is the next book going to be in blank verse?
You glibs that reign’d at my reading,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Festus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but first to Heaven.
I’ve never felt guilt until I read this: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46461/those-winter-sundays
for me the last word was written a century ago: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/07/no-slouch/
When I decided to appropriate it for the cartoon I had forgotten how long that poem is. Took long than I thought it was going to.
The end result was epic though.
It was indeed.
I made money in high school writing poetry for the other poor asses
Stuck in Mr. Pelowski’s 10th or 11th grade English classes.
$4 per poem. No two the same.
Nothing sappy. Nothing lame.
I saw what you did there.
Just my luck, when I tried to pass off the opening to Dead and Bloated as a poem for class my teacher was young enough to know what it was.
The Greek epics even had The Chorus written into the story.
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/in-mysterious-kidnapping-man-in-golf-cart-fired-gun-at-parking-lot-and-then-abducted-woman-cops/
Philly is a mess
Kidnap a girl at gunpoint
Golf cart getaway
It seems like they are trying to displace Chicago.
I was lucky and introduced to the Eddas and sagas in high school. Once you get into the rhythm and their use of kennings they are a fun read.
There is also a great deal of real world wisdom in the Havamal (Odin’s sayings) . A very small sampling.
https://www.medievalists.net/2014/08/advice-norse-god-wisdom-havamal/
P A goes to hell
Please fix all elections now
Fetterman drugged
5~7~5
Fucking auto correct. …. On drugs
Open your presents
No, you open your presents
Kaczynski Christmas
Poems that do not
Rhyme in any way at all
Haikus are so lame
Couldn’t agree more. Thought they were dumb as a kid too.
I assume they were a way to teach meter in school. Now with cultural appeal.
Not mentioned traditional haiku includes a seasonal reference of some kind too.
https://haikuoftheforest.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/kigo-seasonal-reference/
All good Haikus must
Contain a season reference
Leaves fade in autumn
Haikus are easy.
Bilingual puns are tricky.
Each Nissan, she goes.
As a child of the Sonoran Desert this poem still strikes me with vigor.
http://www.hanksville.org/voyage/desert/Desert12.html
UCS, that gave me a lot of food for thought. Thank you.
That said, I cannot stand most poetry. I would rather read nonfiction, which is saying something. Shakespeare? Pffft. I need to read it like prose for it to make any sense to me. I’ve been reading more since I can copy/paste and structure it like prose. It reads well that way.
It’s a punctuation problem. As I’ve said before, I’ve made my living most of my life transcribing people speaking. I was a teenager when I started punctuating heavily to render what I heard so someone else could read it the way I heard it. Poetry’s oddball breaks in lines are, to me, a punctuation, and I trip over the line endings like a toe catching a crack in a sidewalk—repeatedly. I can take a poetry reading a little better, but then I’m only listening to the rhythm of the speaker’s voice.
I don’t have the same problem with song lyrics. I don’t know why.
Shakespeare also has the translation problem, as the words are pronounced the same anymore, even though they are words familiar to the audience.
Ug, that link is missing the better example.
Interesting point about using punctuation to capture the spoken word.
I have been writing much of my written communications in an attempt to capture the voice of people since high school….. using punctuation.
The ellipsis is one go-to to capture the hesitations and incomplete phrases that characterize so much of colloquial speech.
In the before times I used to heavily sprinkle my writings with alternate spellings to capture dialect, but that was before “dialect” became a land-mine.
OT. Spain has people that do something that US/State/County/Local government officials will never do in 2020’s America.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/spain-train-chief-quits-over-order-of-too-wide-trains/ar-AA17J6ir?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=e1a2ca21a93d4454aa4c28033ad166f7
Admit fault and take some form consequence? Not here, not now.
Hell we barely have that in the C Suite n the private sector anymore.
Not here, not now,
There is some other place I’d rather be.
Not here, not now,
Watching the world wake up from history.
❤️
This was an unfortunate event that was unforeseen and we will strive to do better in the future.
+ 1 annual bonus
I think Spain and France had different gauges, so all freight between the countries had to be unloaded and reloaded at the border
Russia had different size gauges at least up through the mid-20th century. when Germany “helped” much of Russia to convert to the standard European width.
Russia still uses a 5 foot gauge. The USSR saw it as partially a defensive tool.
Was what I said untrue? I understand why Russia (as, admittedly I should have stated) would change them back – It was only Western Russia, (which basically included Belarus and Ukraine, maybe different.
But. At this point, I give up, you’re right, you win. have a good night
Fun fact: NYC subways have two different car sizes and tunnel widths. The numbered lines are older and narrower than the lettered lines. There are only one or two spots where the two systems connect.
He’s no Buttigieg (sp?)
“Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.
The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
– “A DIVINE IMAGE” William Blake.
There was a young woman called Sally,
Who loved an occasional dally
She sat on the lap
Of a well endowed chap
And said ‘You’re right up my alley.’
New to me and I laughed
There once was a man from Boston
Who went out and bought an Austin
There was room for his ass
And a gallon of gas
But his balls dragged so he lost them.
There once was a lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger
+1 Patricia Neal
True story – got home tonight and the wife had dinner heating in the oven. Her Aunts are stopping by on the way back to MN. The Mrs is making, wait for it – Chicken Spaghetti (we live in TX, so we don’t call it TX Chicken Spaghetti). She has never made this in 27 years of marriage.
What DO you call it? An Abomination?
Synchronicity I
II is my favorite of theirs.
You better go back and check your Glib-o-scope from yesterday, for this is an omen.
Welcome Mrs DrOtto!
Those crazy bastards finally did it! I only wish I still smoke weed.
They didn’t think they had enough carbs already.
But it’s Gluten Free! Therefore healthy. #Science
God that sounds amazing. It’s like every food group in one package.
“Now introducing Reese’s Pieces with Lays infused with Lays potato chips and flakes of Oscar Mayer bacon.”
No extra carbs with that, and, CPRM – still no gluten.
I’d eat that, at least once.
🤢
Wait til he sees the one with pretzels…
So this site popped up on my feed.
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/the-basics-of-investing-in-high-yield-bonds-417068
It’s not wrong, but if this is all the research you do for buying high yield you are seriously screwed.
I’ve no idea if it is click farm or what, but the “about” section has short bios and a DEI section and nothing else. So I guess it is all good.
I hear “high-yield,” I think, “junk.”
I know most Glibs know this already, but I really wanted to make a point of it.
One real important thing about the Debt Ratio – even once you determine it, you still need to take a good look at the company’s assets. A LOT of fly-by-night like to take essentially worthless property or equipment and list it as if it were pristine – at cost of purchase, and this will come into their valuation of their assets at book value. Obviously, the difference between the two can be quite significant.
And vice versa – the depreciated asset (say, a commercial building) may be worth lots more than it shows on the books.
Diversify your bonds.
This was on the side. Not being made today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3wUD3AZg4
Man I miss his show.
Or swipe your ebt.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xLTTX35LNJo&feature=shares
Wow. Just wow.
Fun fact, I sued her and got a judgment of just over a million dollars.
The only poem I know by heart is one I wrote 30+ years ago, which I am reminded of several times every winter:
I awoke today to the snow,
around the sun a sundog glow.
Fairy trees, fractal white,
eyes squint against the bright.
Crystal skin upon a stream,
sounds muffle as in a dream.
A fine day to be alive,
unless to work you must drive.
I’m not sure the last line fits, but I never came up with a better one.
People assume that Oklahomans must be barely literate, but my public school Oklahoma education included Gilgamesh, Homer, Beowulf, the Hebrew bible as literature, etc. We even listened to a recording of what modern linguists thought the Old English Beowulf sounded like.
We all had to memorize and recite the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Middle English, a feat that was made easier when we realized its meter followed the theme song to the Beverly Hillbillies.
The best part about the version of the Iliad they had us read was that it was a literal translation, still verse by verse and not paragraph driven, but they didn’t force a rhyme or meter to any verse.
There are strange things done under the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee
I used to be able to recite this (https://poets.org/poem/cremation-sam-mcgee) around the campfire at YMCA summer camp back in the day.
Sadly, many of my brain cells have been killed since then.
Pisses me off that I can still recite the preamble to the constitution but many of our sitting “representatives” have never read it.
Bonus points if you can do it without singing it.
In school where we had to write that for a test, you could hear people humming.
My dad had a fondness for Robert Service and that poem. I like it too.
I won’t lie – poetry makes my eyes glaze over.
Poe is a rare exception.
Completely agree.
You can’t read The Raven without getting caught up in the rhythm and involuntarily obeying Poe’s subtle commands to crescendo and decrescendo, to accelerendo and ritardando.
“As I nodded nearly napping,
Suddenly there came a tapping,
as of someone gently rapping,
Rapping at my chamber door.”
Starts innocently enough, but by the end you feel the madness of the narrator.
Here’s a James Earl Jones version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI
The Bells even more so imo.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I’ve many miles before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
Always meant a lot to me.
I encountered a wolf pack in the woods of the YMCA summer camp I worked at one night.
I wasn’t afraid.
They weren’t afraid.
It was quite lovely.
They went on their way.
I went on mine.
Frost was wonderful.
A friend of mine was treed by a pack of wolves. He always carries a pistol when deer hunting now.
TO WOO WOMEN.
At one point I could do this from memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM
It almost makes it worth learning.
❤️
Fleas,
Adam had em,
Seeking shrilled Waters, to find the colored hue,
wondering what comes with us the battered and the few,
turn to seek another day another dark and gray, something that was once bright glorious and, whatever….
/dig…..
suh’ fam
whats goody
There once was a man named Enis…
Was he from Nantucket?
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!
A masterpiece. The pinnacle of how poetry (not song lyrics) appears to me.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih-3vK2qLls
I have to say I enjoyed your Carolling.
Morning, Glibs.
Worldwide all hands livestream this morning.
An hour when I can glib while working!
Virginia to join the civilized world and designate a state pony
Nothing. Left. To. Cut.
“Civilized” is synonymous with “Degenerate”.
I feel complete. This is what was missing from my life.
So what happens when the pony dies? Is there a pony succession plan?
Mornin’, reprobates.
I fucking hate people.
Apparently in 2023, people think “cell phone problems” are an acceptable reason to not come to work.
🙁
The world before cell phones was an uncivilized wasteland. How did people survive?
Good morning, All,
At least the person’s cat wasn’t sick. Might need to call 911.
Had one person gone for 30 days, showed back up and said he was in the hospital. Uh-huh.
Another one had his brother call and apologize, said he’d be in as soon as he got out of jail.
How are you supposed to call out if you have cell phone problems?
You get online and ask for the score of the Cal game.
That makes no sense.
My first “cell phone” was the Blackberry gifted by management in 2002.
Manager sang the praises of this marvelous new toy, I offered that the ability to annoy me 24×7 was not my idea of marvelous.