| liner, oddly, dreamy, expose, "seller" door. |
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Image from the Internet.
The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed!
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.
19 comments:
If "Emma," the antiques dealer in today's Jumble cartoon, should happen to be a live-in resident of that building, would her shop be properly called a dweller store?
~ OMK
Had no real problems with the jumble, although I stumbled for a bit on the second clue by misreading it. But the solution was clear once all the letters were there. It was ok,I thought, fun but not laugh out loud.
Looking forward to poem(s) later.
I was bracing myself to have to come up with a poem this morning, but nice to just have Ol'Man Keith's gloss and Sandy's comment. I'd give Keith a pretty high 'speller score' on his solution this morning.
The cartoon had such an oddly structured layout, that it gave me a pause for a moment. It's oddity could hardly have been finer, and not a bit seamy.
If I could take a ocean liner on a trip to anywhere
I'd like to take it to a dream-land without despair.
To a deserted island with no natives to expose
To deathly diseases, when on a beach I dip my toes.
A land where penguins had evolved to speak
And I could comprehend the words from each beak.
Where they could sell me some souvenir-ish stuff,
Like shells glued together into little native huts.
My Dad was a beachcomber in his retirement days.
He'd gather shells and driftwood, add googly eyes to gaze.
He'd sell them to the tourists who wandered near his door.
Those oddly fashioned sculptures, that they would adore.
In Chinese, the written word for penguin, 企鵝 , can be translated as 企 = business 鵝 = goose.
Ah yes, to be exposed or not to be exposed . . .
My apologies for being so late. Writer's block last night, then purposely slept late today, (I've run out of some of my medicines due to confusions when I switched my HMO in January, and one lack has started to cause me discomfort I tried to sleep thru.) until I finally woke up with the first line in my head, and went on from there. The second verse was from the bit of trivia I picked up recently, and the third verse is an accurate account of my Dad's retirement in Gold Beach, Oregon. He liked it there because it reminded him of where he grew up on the shores of Lake Superior in Wisconsin.
Never any need to apologize to us, Owen. I was happy to see the word "purposely" connected to your late sleep. We are all of us happy to know that you actually intend to take care of yourself!
Ah, your poem today speaks to us all as well, to the dream of a utopia, a land "w/o despair," especially an island of freedom from fear of this damnable plague!
Thank you for letting us share your fantasy.
~ OMK
Well, perhaps I should use reading glasses. There's no Y on #4 ergo, it's not EPOXSY*. A great J-word but not today. And perhaps now I can do Bilbo without trying to fudge on dwarves using epoxy in Middle Earth.
As I solve I try to imagine the next Bilbo poem and that word....
Great poem by Owen, I found the X. Perfect gloss , OMK. No, Misty, your welcome to erato-size. I'll try Sandy. Check in later.
WC
* And not spelled that way. And, I unconsciously spelled it correct the next time.
Ps, And there was the missing O for the second word
Finally the dwarves and Bilbo trudged up a long hill
Constantly, thoughts turned to the menace still
Of when and if the dragon would return and the danger it posed
They must reach the cave from which they'd not be exposed.
Oddly, thought Bilbo, "There no sign of his return"
As he collapsed in the back of the lookout cave.
He was quickly in dreamland but Thorin wanted to learn.
He had taken charge now. He was the royal margrave.
The door behind the opening led to a rock lined inner cell
The dwarves and Bilbo had found a safe place to dwell
And plan the next move. But all they had were empty words
And nothing to be seen from the south save flocks of birds
WC
I've added a detail. That's a bust of David Hoyt for $20 !
Misty -- nice glosses: finer = liner, oddly!, seamy = dreamy, a pause = expose, speller score = seller door.
The LINK for 企鵝 wasn't very noticable above, so here it is again.
Misty ~ After our exchanges of yesterday, I woke this morning with highly rhythmic poetry throbbing in my brain.
Two pieces stood out in my dreams.
The first, the more dominant, is a wonderful example of primitive rhythms—strong proof that English verse is “accentual,” not “syllabic.”
It is The Congo, by Vachel Lindsay, a politically incorrect example of a white poet engaging in cross cultural minstrelsy. Here’s an excerpt:
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.
And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
“BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,
“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,”
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,
Torch-eyed and horrible,
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM, kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.
(Notice how even when the syllable count runs as high as 11 and 13, the basic beat is tetrameter, a steady percussive 4 counts, punctuated by 2- and 3-beat lines.)
My other favorite is quite the opposite, somewhat more “civilized.” But even with British English, T.S. Eliot has an ear for meter. It feels more like a glide than an oom-pah, but it is quite definite. Here’s the opening of The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
(Even though his lines vary greatly in length--conversational, say, rather than Lindsay’s jazz rhythm--the beat is unmistakable.)
Both of these guys use relatively short lines. Eliot goes as long as 5 beats, max. Good ol’ pentameter.
As I wrote elsewhere, it is hard for an English poet to sustain interest in rhyme in 5-beat lines for a length of time. 14-line sonnets seem about the outside for the popular ear.
Shakespeare of course is the nonpareil.
I’ll offer just a taste of one I have always loved, #73--nearly perfect metrically--one that grows on me more and more with the years:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
It is so very much like conversation--but not prosaic--that the beat only dawns on one as the rhymes land.
~ OMK
Wow, poetry in your dreams. Shades of Coleridge's opium dreams of Xanadu. My opiate would be a shot of caffeine with perhaps vanilla cream added. But, I don't like to get "high".
Again, FLN, did anyone check out the limericks from the contest that Owen linked?
I have four that I could post to start things off
WC
W.C. ~
Looks like the dwarves & Bilbo have checked into Heartbreak Hotel!
~ OMK
___________
PS. Wilbur, did you get my email?
Pls let me know, because if you didn't receive it, some other guy with your name is being very polite in not telling me to bug out.
LOVE Vachel Lindsey! Such a shame that PC rules him and Rudyard Kipling as being unspeakable today. I used to have a recording of Lindsey himself reciting The Congo! Magnificent! More song than poem! I'm sure it's still available on YouTube, but I'll just have to let it replay in my memory. But I do recommend you check it out. Just reading it is like seeing a B&W thumbnail of DaVinci's Last Supper in comparison.
Keith, I did see email from Keith Fowler. I said "That somehow sounds familiar". Duh.
Yes, excellent editing. I've actually said , talking to self again, Wilbur you need an editor. I also think that poetry needs to sit for awhile.
Although, having said that I have noticed that on re-reading, some of the stuff is not that bad.
I gave a very brief account of the death of Smaug. Now the buildup to the great battle of the five armies when dwarves begin the fight vs elves and men. Then the orcs, wargs , trolls and goblins appear and it's bedlam.
Finally the Eagles come and Beorn brings his bear creatures in and the tide is turned. Bilbo and the Arkenstone play a role and Gandalf returns.
But I am going to stop. I have another idea and you all will be familiar if I get it rolling.
WC
You all blow my mind. I have energy to aporeciate, but not often to contribute.
Thank you for everything.
Oh my goodness--it's bedtime and I just checked in quickly with no time to respond, and was simply blown away by all your amazing poetry, ending up with Keith's commentary and one of my favorite Eliot poems. No time to respond, can only say that his blog is turning out to be incredible and blows my mind. Wow! Bet I can't sleep tonight with all this excitement, but thank you thank you thank you, everybody.
Owen ~
Glad you know--and love--The Congo!
Yes, Lindsay's reading is available on YouTube.
One of the advantages of theater training lies in all the poetry we get to memorize while young. You know that's when we retain things practically forever.
I learned Congo at a college workshop for high school students--around the same years I was relying on Eliot to enter Oral-Interp contests in the Bay Area.
Like all good poetry these have stayed with me over the decades.
~ OMK
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