the blog quebecois

Sigh. It's come to this, already.

BIG FUZZY-WUZZY CAT O' MINE

Big fuzzy-wuzzy cat o' mine
My Muse is mute, in pantomime
But tho' inspiration's fled
and my head is dead
I still have said
big fuzzy-wuzzy cat o' mine

Well, it's nice to see that I've still got my poetic chops.

Though I don't have a cat, fuzzy-wuzzy or otherwise. That's strictly artistic licence.

I've decided to shut notalexironix down and transfer its pieces here. It wasn't getting any traffic anyway, and this site is getting . . . some.

Most of notalexironix was humor, or tried to be. There's some time-sensitive stuff, which I'll appropriately back-date.

But the larger humor pieces I'll just post as is. This will make me look as if I'm just beavering away, coughing up these comic gems one after the other as though they sprang into existence one fevered afternoon.

I wish. There's one piece that went through 57 drafts and I'm still not entirely happy with it. Maybe one more rewrite will do the trick.

In the meantime, for your delectation:

In the summer of 2000 I was desperately trying to derail Hillary Clinton's run for the Senate.

I don't know why. I just hate the bitch, and I was probably drunk, too.

So it occurred to me, why not mercilessly mock her by rewriting a famous T.S. Eliot poem?

You slap your forehead and exclaim: "Yes! What a great idea!"

But that's with the benefit of hindsight. Remember, I thought of it first. And I was probably drunk.

You'd think the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy would have gobbled it up, but alas, there was no market for a 2500-word poetic exegesis on Mizz Rodham's shortcomings.

With a coldly critical eye some years later I see now that it likely wouldn't have changed the result of the election, but hey.

It's too clever by half in some places, and I'll admit, even I scratch my head at some of the references -- Richard Lazio? -- oh, yeah, her Republican opponent.

More importantly, though, I realized that I could publish it right here, right now.

And no one can do a damned thing to stop me.

Mwahahahahahah.

---------------------

The Love Song of H. Rodham Clinton
(with apologies to Eliot)

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Voi fookinza Jiuliani bastardo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like Vince Foster etherized upon . . .

Whoa. Bad memories there.
Let us instead go to happy place happy place
happyplacehappyplacehappyappyappyplace

haaaapyyyplaaaaacehaaaapyyyplaaaaace...

Like a Republican eviscerated upon an autopsy slab;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in four-starlet hotels
Our Chappaqua digs in suburban Hell:
Streets that follow like a toedyous consultant
Of libidinous intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "WhuzaaaaaAAAAAUP?"
Let us go and make Dick Morris shuddup.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Richard Lazio.

The yellow peril, er, fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow horde, um, smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the loot that falls from the Chine...chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft contributor night,
Curled once about the House, and fell asleep.

[The above should in no way be seen as metaphorically
soliciting illegal campaign contributions from the
People's Liberation Army. I am, however, open to offers.]

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow . . . smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a case to beat the cases that impede;
There will be time to purr and litigate
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a subpeona on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of the Fifth.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Richard Lazio.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and pose for Vanity Fair
With that hairband thingy in the middle of my hair --
[They will say: "How that hairband thingy is growing thin!"]
My pantsuit, my breastplate mounting firmly to the chin,
My hairband thingy plain and modest, for the peasantry to win
[They will say: "But how her charms are so, so . . . Jacobin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a jury might reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with Arkie goons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the banjo from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the lies already, known them all --
The lies that fix you in an unfortunate phrase,
But when I am interrogated, stalling with spin,
When I am grim, yet giggling under it all
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the scuttlebutt of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the ho's already, known them all --
Ho's who are beretted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, furred with thick brown hair!]
Is it DNA on a dress
That makes me so digress?
Ho's who dally under a desk, or lurk along the Mall.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
Who were lied to by Big Tobacco.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Or maybe President of
the World Bank.
Pretty much the same thing,
though I understand
the pension plan's better.

. . . . .

And into the afternoon, the evening, creeps the lewinsky!
Or some improved thong-slinger,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should we, after I invoice the vices
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and plotted, wept and brayed,
Though I have seen my husband's thingy [browned lightly, or scalded] brought in upon
a platter,
I am no prophet -- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Prosecutor hold my quote, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the trumpets, the motorcades, the vast conspiracy,
Amid the legerdemain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the master with a smile,
To have squeezed the perverse into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lorenazus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --
If one, settling a pillow by his head,
Should say: "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is,
y'all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the summits and the scorecards; the spattered reign illiquid.
After the gavels, after the dustups, after the flirts that snail
along the floor --
And this, and so much more? --
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
Which is why I call no press conferences.
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, wielding a pillow or throwing a magic lantern
And turning toward the microphone, should say:
"Ooooh! Long-lost billing records!"

. . . . .

No! I am not the Prince formerly known as Hamlet
(nor the Artist formerly known as Prince),
nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To smell a Congress; pitch a hissy-fit or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous
(Quite a bit like Stephanopolous);
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous --
Almost, at times, the Fool.

One word, just ONE word, and I will kill you.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,
Depending on the polls.
Do they tint her hair bright lime? Do they dare to taint him peach?
I shall wear quite banal trousers, and walk upon the beach,
for suitable photo-ops.
And I'm still not calling a press conference.
I have heard the pundits zinging, each to each.

I do not think that they will zing for me.

I have seen them riding CNNward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the Robert Novak
While that windbag blows the water; whitewater and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the DNC
With 'cy wonks wreathed in repartee red and brown
'til hummin' Rolls Royces wake us -- oh, frown!

Tit for tat: All this for that --
the Dowager Queen of Hymietown.

A funny column from Andy Lamey of the National Post yesterday on "trophy poetry."

Which is:

Trophy poetry is defined by two characteristics: It tends to be written by people who have achieved fame in fields far removed from poetry; and it is very bad.

I had a talk with a deer today / we had a talk on the road some way ... between his frequent snorts / he asked me if I sought his pelt / cause if I did he said he felt / quite out of sorts.

Yikes. Not exactly Emily Dickinson, is it?

Anonymous men play a part in a lot of ABPJ poems. Every other review seems to have a mystery date -- but this one is introduced so violently, he makes the audience jump. He GRABS her by the hand. He doesn't take her by the hand, he doesn't even grasp her hand. He grabs it! He tears it right off her wrist! It's his hand now!

This is from the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal, a website that posts the "best" of sites like Poetry.com and ridicules them. (There don't seem to be any permalinks, so scroll down to January 5 for the poem being discussed.)

Which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel -- but hey, we'll take our fun where we can.

I was going to write about this inane Don Cherry "controversy," but Bob at Let It Bleed, Jaeger at Trudeaupia (permalink broken -- scroll down to "Cheese Eating Visor Wearers") and Bruce at Autonomous Source have covered the territory nicely. Besides, I have other fish to fry.

John Kerry has won the Michigan and Washington primaries. He must be stopped.

This is from his official website (scroll down about one-third of the page):

In Boston, Kerry and I are discussing his poetry, a longtime and private avocation. He begins buoyantly. "I don't claim to be a poet at all; I just like the expression, the form of it," he tells me. "I like Pablo Neruda, who's a great romantic. I like all the Romantics: Percy Shelley and Byron and Keats. I like Kipling; I like to mimic some of that doggerelish stuff. Oh, gosh, obviously Yeats. [. . .]"

Impressive stuff, huh?
Shows gravitas, eh?
Not so fast, bub
Let's go, as they say,
to the tape

Or failing that, the Weekly Standard:

And now John Kerry--a man with the finest education American private schools can offer, a man of the world who winters in Aspen and summers in Nantucket--has descended into doggerel under pressure of his frontrunner status. "Like father, like son / One term only / And Bush is done," he chanted at campaign stops last week. Well, two can play at that game. How about "IGNORE THE BORE IN 2004"? "BE WARY OF KERRY"? The possibilities are endless. If we could just figure out a rhyme for Nantucket . . .

OK, you're thinking, he's probably going for the Jesse Jackson rhymin' moron vote. But wait, it gets worse.

Back in June of last year, Andy Lamey of the National Post had a funny column on what's been called "trophy poetry" -- poems by people who are famous for something else entirely, and decide that they need to burnish their Renaissance Man image by writing terrible poetry. I blogged about it here.

Unfortunately the link to Lamey's piece has long since expired; but I had the foresight to preserve one of Kerry's "poems" for posterity:

I had a talk with a deer today
we had a talk on the road some way . . . between his frequent snorts
he asked me if I sought his pelt
cause if I did he said he felt
quite out of sorts.

This would be described, in technical terms, as "godawful."

Neruda? I don't see it. Yeats? Not likely.

Kerry seems to think he's Robert freakin' Frost!

I think that the Republicans are well positioned to exploit the "Poetry Gap," since, as luck would have it, they've got a pretty good little poet in George W. Bush, who just last fall penned the immortal Ode to Laura, on the Occasion of Her Grand Tour of the Continent:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my lump in the bed
How I've missed you

Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy

The dogs and the cat, they missed you too
Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier

Sure, it's dopey, but then Dubya's kind of dopey, too.

It's also sweet and really quite witty. Ogden Nash he ain't, but he ain't half-bad.

I don't know quite what to make of this site, but you might find it interesting. It's a collection of animated poems (at least that's how I'd describe them) in various languages, with a catchy jazz score.

In any event, it'll have to do. I haven't had a lot of time today to look around or write.

so we had a plan
in a big blue can
the government substitute for meat

save ferris

You've heard of slam poetry? How about spam poetry?

Und now, giff it hup for the spam-inspired stylinks of . . . Alllllbert SpAMMMMmus! Spamus!

better, it dissolves in you
mouth which will go

directly to you
blood stream
15 minutes or less—

to feel
the hardness going on.

had we but World enough, and Time,
this coyness Lady were no crime.
we would sit down, and think which way
to walk, and pass our long Loves Day.

andrew marvell

Paul Sorene in spiked:

Shall poet laureate Andrew Motion compare Camilla Parker Bowles to a summer's day? Well, a typical British summer is overcast, grey and miserable...so why not? But as the poet laureate works hard for his paltry salary of £500, and seeks a word that rhymes with Camilla in the bottom of his stipend of 500 bottles of sherry, we feel for him.

Sure you do. Suuuuurrrre. You're just dripping with empathy.

But enough, I feel the embers stirring. It is time to dip my quill in green ink and write something fitting. How about a Haiku, so fitting for Charles, a man interested in the ways of the Far East: 'You spurned me long ago / So I married another / You returned to mum.' Or the schoolboyish: 'Roses are red / Violets are blue / Shergar is missing / So you'll have to do.'

But, hold on a moment, I've got it. And, what's more, I've found a word that rhymes with Camilla.

'Camilla / Polyfilla?'

Pretty lame, Paul. Fortunately, the last time I checked, England is still a member of the Commonwealth, which means that we can exchange poetry hints and iambic or trochaic verse (measuring not more than thirteen feet) tariff-free.

I put on my versifier's cape, fired up my pipe and quickly came up with these, which should be good for a couple of stanzas:

Chinchilla, villa, killa, Gila (as in Gila Monster), and Godzilla. Also, if you can work in a reference to Muhammad Ali, you might be able to use Thrilla and Manila.

No charge, pal. For King and Country and all that.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan�s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

W.B. Yeats (1919)

A LITTLE MUSLIM FROM PALESTINE

I'll always be a contender
Yes, I know my bones are very tender
And by Allah you won't see me surrender
Look at my eyes? You'll see no butterflies
My home is filled with cries... due to all the lost lives
But I swear by Allah I'll never compromise
I'll still throw the stones even with my broken bones
Why can't I hear from you, don't you have any phones?
Ya I forgot, your not on the chase, try it out and put your self in my place
Soon I'll return to my lord , the one that deserves every grace
Oh you don't have to worry cause of me you'll find no trace
It really is to late, why did you wait?
You could have sent me at least one dinner plate
I guess it is my fate
And La Ilaha Illa Allah is my mate.

Stephen Taylor did a bit of Googling on the names of those arrested last week in the alleged plot to bomb targets in and around Toronto and turned up the above wretched piece of poesy, written by one Zakaria Amara. Other contributions to his oeuvre here and here.

For extra fun, you can try to hack his email address, zack_amara@hotmail.com . I tried a few obvious passwords -- islam, jihad, allah -- with no luck. Odd. That's not how it works in the movies.

I would imagine that the cops already know what's in it, but maybe not. So here's your chance to become a counter-terrorism hero.

My talents lie elsewhere, such as promoting the careers of imprisoned "artists." To that end, I submitted young Zak's ode to suicide bombing to Poetry.com.

Poetry.com is, if not a scam, about as close to one as you can get. Would-be poets submit their would-be poetry to contests the site runs. No matter how awful it is, the sender gets an email claiming that his entry has qualified as a semi-finalist and it can be seen in printed form (with a couple thousand other semi-finalists) for the bargain price of $50.

If you want to see just how bad some of these are, here's a page where you can read them as they stream in.

Here's an explanation of how these vampires operate. And here's Dave Barry, writing about the same company in the pre-Internet days.

There's at least one (very entertaining) blog called the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal that grabs some of the worst and makes fun of them. Maybe Zakaria's about to get doubly famous.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-- Wilfred Owen, 8 October 1917 - March, 1918

I'd never given it much thought, but one day I wondered about the role of women poets in WWI. Poetry was considered a "proper" pursuit (as compared to, say, novel writing) for ladies of the time.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of it anthologized; and what I did find of it was often in the heroic (classical tropes of gallantry and sacrifice) mode as championed by such as W.B Yeats (as compared to the gritty naturalism of Siegfried Sassoon, et.al. Given that women were in most cases far from the front lines, it was unconvincing, at best.

But war was not only one of the greatest drivers of technological and scientific ferment; it also signalled great revolutions in human affairs. WWI started the migration from the small towns and rural life to the big cities; WWII further carried on the trend and especially emancipated women. (It is one of the ironies of history that Goebbels and the Nazis were famous for boasting of "total war" but it was the Allies who brought it to the field by completely marshalling their female citizens, freeing their men to deliver the full fury of their nations. As Toland and other historians of the war have pointed out, it was rare for German women to be employed out of the home [and with a full complement of servants for the upper classes]; and the government depended on half-starved, fully-resentful slave labor [who never missed a chance at sabotage] to staff their industry.)

Where women excelled in poetry were in small miniatures that summoned up the changing landscape of life and love. Madeline Ida Bedford (who doesn't even get a page in Wikipedia), captured the new terrain nicely in her evocation of a (Cockney?) factory worker:

Earning high wages?
Yus, Five quid a week.
A woman, too, mind you,
I calls it dim sweet.

Ye'are asking some questions -
But bless yer, here goes:
I spends the whole racket
On good times and clothes.

Me saving? Elijah!
Yer do think I'm mad.
I'm acting the lady,
But - I ain't living bad.

I'm having life's good times.
See 'ere, it's like this:
The 'oof come o' danger,
A touch-and-go bizz.

We're all here today, mate,
Tomorrow - perhaps dead,
If Fate tumbles on us
And blows up our shed.

Afraid! Are yer kidding?
With money to spend!
Years back I wore tatters,
Now - silk stockings, mi friend!

I've bracelets and jewellery,
Rings envied by friends;
A sergeant to swank with,
And something to lend.

I drive out in taxis,
Do theatres in style.
And this is mi verdict -
It is jolly worth while.

Worth while, for tomorrow
If I'm blown to the sky,
I'll have repaid mi wages
In death - and pass by.

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

--------------------------------------------------------
Dylan Thomas “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" (1933).

Got wood?

Bad Rachel:

Like other of their fellow poets, Talibani “insurgents,” too, have sometimes laid down their tools and taken up the pen to declare their “wounded hearts, lyrical souls, and . . . passionate love of language.” The torture and slaughter of non-combatants; the administering of purdah and the unsexing of women and little girls with brutality, burqa, mutilation, and murder; the beastly coercion of little boys into a life of feminized sexual slavery and the turning of them out as prostitutes—these are all things that can try a mujahid’s spirit.

The spring of change needs blood to rain down,
It requires the irrigation of the gardens with blood.
Valuing the blood of the people of the past
Requires the price of human blood.
Each drop of it has become a Nile of the dawn’s blood;
The Pharaohs want to fill the Nile with blood.

A bit too Wordsworthian for my tastes -- goddamn Romantics.