| || expel, ditto, skinny, violet, loved ones.
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.
9 comments:
[Apologies to R.L.S.]
I have a siggy other who is stuck inside with me,
But having her beside me is as useful as can be!
She runs all sorts of errands that I cannot do myself,
And curls in bed beside me like a skinny little elf!
She doesn't like it much when I'm expelling gas,
Or when she's watching shows, and for help I ask
With a rattling noisemaker, or ditto by cell phone.
But I can only do so much, I'm mostly lying prone.
Altho she has her moods, from rosy pink to angry violet;
There are times to be remembered, and a few times to forget.
The years we've spent together are ones I would not spurn.
For I know that she loves me, and I love her in return.
Shades of Stevenson! A delightful ripoff, Owen!
Today's Solution:
He inherited the bakery from his Quaker grandparents who in keeping with their pacifist traditions always insisted on creating their loaves and cakes with the gentlest of touches.
They rarely kneaded dough. It was too violent an assault, they said, on the very stuff that gave them a livelihood.
But he soon found that their recipes--calling always for a soft, patient hand--were too darned slow to turn a profit.
He was rash & materialistic, and before long he just shoved buns into the oven & tossed pizzas like discuses, rushing every batch from stoves to sales counter as fast as he could manage.
Before long, the money came rolling in. So much for tradition.
He became a bank.
~ OMK
The jumble was definitely not a problem today. The solution was even painfully obvious.
Owen, I need to confess that your poem parody confused me. I know what Stevenson poem you are parodying, but please forgive my obtuseness, I don't understand what you're saying. That is, at first I thought you were talking about a cigarette and later it seemed to be your wife, but it can't be both, can it? As I said, obtuseness. Maybe I just don't understand "siggy"?
1. Please link RLS poem. Not for me but for some poor, poorly educated lurker. Actually, as a math major, I had a fair amount of literateur* but scant poetry.
2. The solution to the riddle was painfully slow. I did grok it before coming here earlier.
3. I re-read the chapters in the Hobbit and perhaps I'll continue for awhile after all.
I think I got Owen's poem. Here's a snippet from one of JRR's poems that I call the dirge of Boromir.
This is part one , Aragon speaks
Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
‘What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?
‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey,
I saw him walk in empty lands until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North, I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor,
‘O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.’
WC
* Yes, literature. Literateur is what we've been doing in here
Well, Owen's poem confirmed all four Jumble words for me, as correct, but I still had a problem with the solution. Voila! Keith's gloss fixed my error. I had put LOVE in as the second word, but now saw my mistake. Very weird, but totally delightful and sweet and crazy Jumble cartoon.
And, of course, wonderful poetry and stories to start the day--thanks, everybody!
Sandy ~ Despair not!
I understand your confusion, as my first reading of "siggy" was of a cigarette. But I then came to read it as a two-word reference--taking it for a phrase we use so often it positively craves to be shortened.
What does "siggy other" mean to you? Expand "siggy" to 4 syllables, and whaddya get?
In addition to marriage or some other familial relationship, do you or your friends have any other "siggy others" who matter greatly in your lives?
~ OMK
Oh wow! Significant other!!! D'oh.
Yep, Siggy = S.O. = Significant Other. And all I ripped off from Stevenson was his first line and meter from My Shadow. Sorry for the confusion. As you know, Bren declared herself transgender last year, changed her name from Brenda to Brent, disavows my using a female pronoun for her, and I sort of wince at calling her my "wife" any more. I had a long transition accepting LGBQ, and this last stage is just a step too far for me.
These lengthy (7-beat, heptameter) lines posted by Owen & Wilbur might seem to undermine my assertion that it is hard to listen to long lines (5 and up) that rhyme. In English verse, that is.
So allow me to clarify.
I didn't say it is impossible, only difficult--and that we usually can put up with them for only 12- 14 lines.
And when they are super long (over 5 beats), we need to address the question: what constitutes a "line"?
A line is not a mechanical thing. It is not just what any poet puts down on paper. It is an oral expression, not a literary pattern.
When a line on the page exceeds 6 and 7 beats, our ears (anglophone ears) usually hear a couple of lines. When the long lines rhyme (as in the examples above), we often hear the couplet (two lines) as four lines, with the rhyme landing only every other line.
The device that makes long lines tolerable in English is the caesura. This is a natural pause in the middle of each long line, a place to breath, breaking it into two parts (or two lines, as I've been saying--and as our ears hear them).
Check it out.
In Owen's poem above, the first caesura is after "siggy other," and the next (in line 2) is after "beside me."
In Wilbur's example, the first caesura is after "fen and field." And so on.
The caesura is one of the oldest elements of English poetry. It is built into our use of rhythm. It comes long before rhyme was ever introduced.
Here is the opening of Beowulf:
Hwæt! We Gardena / in geardagum,
(Listen! We of the Spear-Danes in days of yore)
þeodcyninga, / þrym gefrunon,
(Of those folk-kings the glory have heard,)
hu ða æþelingas / ellen fremedon.
(How those noblemen brave-things did.)
Each slash marks a caesura.
(Pronunciation below:
Wat! Way gar-dayna / een gayar-degum
Thay-odd-küningah / thrüm ge-froo-nun
Hoo the ath-uh-lingus / elen fray-maydun)
Each printed line is actually composed of two "oral lines" or waves. If the caesura was not used, the line would be 5 to 7 feet long, but the caesura breaks it into two manageable parts of 4 or 3 beats.
Too often, when modern poets try to rhyme lines of 5 beats and longer, we neglect the caesura, and the result is awkward--hard to speak, and harder to hear.
~ OMK
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