fling93 loves fishies

Punchbowl Poetry

Well, look at that. It’s May 5th, 2005, and you know what that means!

Yes, that’s right! There’s only TWO MORE WEEKS until Natalie Portman’s new film opens. Incidentally, that’s also when my term paper is due, so here’s yet another meme to tide you over. Yeah, I’m such a hypocrite (Update 6/9/05: Yeah, not only did I watch Episode III on opening day, I also watched it again on opening weekend. And I also watched Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy twice on opening weekend. Maybe that list of things wasn’t so much about things I didn’t get but about things that I was in denial about getting?).

While you’re waiting for Natalie’s new film me to get back to political commentary, check out Will Wilkerson taking on the recent liberal meme of Social Security as insurance, making many points that I had planned to make myself (via Julian Sanchez). And for something a bit shorter and simpler, check out my comments on Social Security at sQurl’s newly remade blog, Mythos of a Sorority Geek.

I should take this opportunity to mention that sQurl has been on a roll ever since she renamed her blog and began focusing on her perspective of gender issues. Of particular note is her critique of the notion of equality, and her observations on how different genders present information.

But to get back to the meme, Donna B. tags me with Ellison’s Punchbowl Meme:

Simply compose a four-line poem and post it on your blog. The first and third verses of the poem should read “Turd in a punchbowl.” Verses two and four may be about any subject (including turds!) but they must rhyme with each other.

Okay, that’s simple enough. No rules about meter, so I can sprawl a bit. Here goes nothing…

Turd in a punchbowl
Is something with which this poem has nothing to do.
Turd in a punchbowl
Is nothing but a piece of sweetly floating poo.

Okay, not exactly fine art, but that was a given cuz of the subject matter. Still, it should be good enough to get me my asterisk on Ellison’s tracking stats. And to complete the meme, let me pass on this challenge to:

• Silvia, one of the few bloggers I know who does write poetry.
• Amanda, so she’ll have something to say and won’t waste all her time clicking on kittens.
• Hugh, to hopefully provide even more evidence that recovering engineers can write poetry.

And of course, anybody else who wants to participate, yada yada yada. Oh, but I guess I’m not done. Now Ellison’s got an even bigger challenge where you have to write a Double Dactyl:

The classic double dactyl is two stanzas, four lines each. The first three lines contain two dactyls each, and the fourth, one dactyl and one extra syllable. (A dactyl is three syllables with the stress on the first syllable.) Thus:

Hard soft soft hard soft soft
Hard soft soft hard soft soft
Hard soft soft hard soft soft
Hard soft soft hard

So much for the meter. Now the fun starts.

The first line of Stanza One must be two rhyming nonsense words: higgledy piggledy, jiggery pokery, bliggity bloggity - you get the idea. The second line should be a proper noun. Names like “Jesus of Nazareth” and “Colin Montgomerie” work well - remember, hard-soft-soft-hard-soft-soft. [think of it this way: JE-sus of NAZ-areth, COL-in mont-GOM-erie -f93]

The last line of Stanza Two must rhyme with the last line of Stanza One. OK so far?

Now, for the tricky rule. One of the lines in Stanza Two [oops, I missed this part -f93] must be a single double dactyl word. For example: schistosomiasis, microbiology.

Real sticklers will tell you that once a double dactyl word has ever been used in a double dactyl poem, it can never be used again. To this, I say Bull-Shit.

Ooh, I’ve never heard of that one. Well, let’s see how this works:

Flingity Fishity!
Natalie Portman is
Overdramatically
Hot as can be!

Turd in a punchbowl is
Not a good topic for
Dactyls in general.
She would agree!

Heh, not my best work, but hey, it’s my first attempt in this form.

No, I don’t plan on writing much more poetry here (it’s not exactly my comparative advantage), but if you’d like to see more, I plan on posting a couple of older ones I’ve written that I think are much better than these on my LiveJournal, so stay tuned for that (Update: indeed, I have, but as they required backstory that’s a bit personal and talks about several real-life people, I decided to make them available just to those I’ve friended on LJ to keep it from wide release. But let me know if you’re interested and I’d be happy to e-mail it to you).

For the rest of you not so interested in poetry, go click on some kittens or something.

Update 6/9/05

Well, we’re still waiting for Hugh (but understandably, as he’s tackling the dactyl), but Silvia and Amanda have come through, as well as David (whom I didn’t tag but did coax a bit) who writes two stanzas.