Out of that I have written these songs
April 9, 2009 7:34 AM   Subscribe

 
I love the classics: Dickinson, Blake, Whitman, Rundgren...

Seriously, though, this is good.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:51 AM on April 9, 2009


Is that a song in your heart? or are you just happy to see me?
posted by grobstein at 7:56 AM on April 9, 2009


Self indulgent doggerel.
posted by JeffK at 8:12 AM on April 9, 2009 [1 favorite]


Really? Well self-indulgent maybe but I don't think doggerel means what you think it means, unless you consider Wordsworth and Shakespeare of low quality.

Actually I don't really care what you think I just didn't want the last comment on this post to be your mean snark. So nyah nyah nyah last word WIN.

More About People
by Ogden Nash


When people aren't asking question
They're making suggestions
And when they're not doing one of those
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes
And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you
They employ you.
Anybody at leisure
Incurs everybody's displeasure.
It seems to be very irking
To people at work to see other people not working,
So they tell you that work is wonderful medicine,
Just look at Firestone and Ford and Edison,
And they lecture you till they're out of breath or something
And then if you don't succumb they starve you to death or something.
All of which results in a nasty quirk:
That if you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.



posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:36 PM on April 9, 2009


I saw this a while back, and my favorites include a line from Whitman and a line from Mary Oliver. I'm happy to say that my submission was likely the only one to involve a photograph of poop.

While I'm not crazy about a lot of the images in the pool myself... I think the idea is a solid and challenging one. And it's a perfect way to encourage people to celebrate National Poetry Month. For anyone who has a Flickr account, the contest is still open until April 15th - so there's time yet to submit something of your own.
posted by avoision at 7:53 AM on April 10, 2009


Returning to the scene of the snark...

I do consider this doggerel. Pulling a single line of verse out of context negates its artistic impact. Any poetry (of fragment thereof) lacking artistic integrity will always be doggerel to me.

Writing that out of context fragment on a scrap of paper, taking a poorly composed photo of it, and posting it to your Flickr page is self indulgence in the grandest style.

So I stand by my snark: Self indulgent doggerel.
posted by JeffK at 11:18 AM on April 10, 2009


Well, I'm going to have to stand by my conclusion that you are totally missing the point, which as I understand it is to give classic lines of verse a clever, and occasionally beautiful, spritz of recontextualization. I think it's a lovely way to turn the idea that poetry is all around us into a reality.

Also, I showed it to my colleague, who is Harvard's poetry curator, and she thought it was cool. So, nyah.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:09 PM on April 10, 2009


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