the continuing adventures of t. s. eliot

many people know that t.s. eliot was a highly successful banker. but did you also know that he wrote poetry?

one day, i. a. richards had a run-in with one of eliot’s bosses at lloyd’s bank and learned the following about his banking prospects:

Bank Official: Tell me, if you will—you won’t mind my asking, will you? Tell me, is he, in your judgement, would you say, would you call him a good poet?

Richards: Well, in my judgment—not everyone would agree, of course, far from it—he is a good poet.

Bank Official: : You know, I myself am really very glad indeed to hear you say that. Many of my colleagues wouldn’t agree at all. They think a Banker has no business whatever to be a poet. They don’t think the two things can combine. But I believe that anything a man does, whatever his hobby may be, it’s all the better if he is really keen on it and does it well. I think it helps him with his work. If you see our young friend, you might tell him that we think he’s doing quite well at the Bank. In fact, if he goes on as he has been doing, I don’t see why—in time, of course, in time—he mightn’t even become a Branch Manager.

__

source: t. s. eliot: the man and his work edited by allen tate, (1967).

dinner parties for poets

in 1946, edith sitwell hosted a dinner party at the sesame club. and then dylan thomas and his wife showed up…

Dylan Thomas and his wife both arrived wildly drunk, fought and hit each other, and altogether presented a painful problem to Edith and all the distinguished guests, as they could neither be disposed of nor tamed. I shall never forget Mrs Thomas shoving a drunken elbow into her ice cream, then offering the elbow to T. S, Eliot & telling him to “lick it off.”

were i eliot, i would have gotten out the hershey’s® syrup and gone to town.

__

source: rosamond lehmann by selena hastings (2002)

meta-phor-play

as a wee raynorling, i lumped the concept of metaphor into the same category as rhyme and alliteration—mere ornaments of language. but just as my taste in fashion matured from aeropostale and abercrombie & fitch to armani and prada so too have my thoughts on the importance of the metaphor. 

indeed i now recognise the metaphor as the very nature of human thought. to understand through metaphor is perhaps our single greatest evolutionary advantage. it is what has elevated the house of homo to the top spot in the kingdom animalia—and as far as i’m convinced, the sole reason why the robots will never conquer us, even the ones that look like arnold schwarzenegger.

i could rant on and on but i will spare you. instead i will treat you to a few f-entries from a dictionary of similes by frank jenners wilstach (1917). this extraordinary book groups metaphors by key words. thus, were i unfamiliar with the concept of melancholy, i could turn to page 256 and see how great poets described the concept in terms of other things. goethe says, “melancholy as a slighted damsel.” poe describes it as “the moaning of the distant sea.” and hawthorne: “like the voice of a child that was spending its infancy without playfulness.” and now i have fairly good idea of what melancholy is without having ever read its actual definition. this is the power of metaphor.

here are some other entries in the key word of f:

• That face of yours looks like the title-page of a whole volume of roguery. —Colley Cibber
• A face that was like an open letter in a foreign tongue. —Henry James
• Faces did glister like the key-hole of a powdering-tub.—Rabelais
• Fades like a once-heard tale.—Lewis Morris
• Failed like a brief dream of unremaining glory.—Shelley
• Faint as the music that in dreams we hear.—Mary A. de Vere
• Fair as original light first from the chaos shot.—Richard Lovelace
• Fall like small birds beaten by the storm against a dead wall, dead.—P.J. Bailey
• Falls like a slaughtered beast headless.—Swinburne
• Familiar as a voice of home.—John Crawford
• Fangless as the fat worms of the grave.—James Whitcomb Riley
• Ferocious as a bogus archangel full of cocaine.—H.L. Mencken
• Fierce as a blast of hate from hell.—Swinburne
• More fine than moonbeams.—Ibid.
• Fists like shoulders of mutton.—Balzac
• Foaming at the mouth like champagne bottles.—Israel Zangwill
• Follow one another like ducks in a gutter.—Beaumont and Fletcher
• Fragrant as the breath of angels.—O.W. Holmes
• Fruitless as the lamentations of a prophet crying in the wilderness.—Frank Horridge

an ode to my abs, an echo poem by raynor ganan

in keeping with the form, i got mythological up in here.

who among us is so mighty, he doesn’t need a trainer?
……raynor.
and what does he hone on his diet of cheez whiz mussels?
……his muscles.
and what of his, causes girls to stop their taxi cabs?
……sick abs!
sing muse, of these abs. do they inspire the oracle delphi?
……aye.
do they summon shapely sirens to swim for shore?
……for sure.
in what state do they incite sylvan nymphets?
……in fits.
are they more intoxicating than the enchantress circe?
…….¡sir, si!
do they bring sweet penelope to peak or chasm?
……orgasm!
this hero raynor, is he but a man or an ageless immortal?
……alas, a mortal.
but how’ll beauties 1,000 years hence reap what he hath sewed?
……this ode!

echo, echo

the echo verse is an ancient form of poetry based on wordplay. in it, a speaker in a quandary shouts out his questions to the nymph echo who then responds by repeating the last few syllables in a way that seems to answer his queries. while many dismiss the form as false wit (at best and nonsense at worst), several of history’s greatest writers have composed echo verses. to namedrop a few: ovid, euripides, erasmus, jonathan swift, and victor hugo. here is swift’s ribald attempt to woo a woman named ann via echo verse.

A Gentle Echo on Woman

Say what will turn that frisking coney
Into the toils of matrimony?
……Money
Has Phoebe not a heavenly brow?
Is it not white as pearl, as snow?
……Ass! no!
Her eyes! Was ever such a pair!
Are the stars brighter than they are?
……They are!
Echo, thou liest but can’t deceive me.
Her eyes eclipse the stars, believe me.
……Leave me
But come, thou saucy, pert romancer,
Who is as fair as Phoebe, answer!
……Ann, sir!

f-word summer hiatus

it’s true. the f-word franchise is starting its summer hiatus with this post. for this last post of the season, i have turned to the omnificent english dictionary in limerick form, an online dictionary where users submit definitions for words entirely as limericks—an ambitious project that rivals the oxford english dictionary itself. though they are only accepting words from aa - di, i was able to gain access to a few choice f-words. here they are. in limerick form:

floccillation
Hey, teacher, I need a vacation
And a wordbook that’s geared to my station.
I looked up carphology.
Without an apology,
It gave me one word: floccillation.

Either word means “plucking at the bedclothes in delirium,” as if picking off the little pellets of fabric that form on blankets.

freeballing
My full house clearly beats your ace high.
Hope you’ve got on some underwear, guy.
“Stop crowing, Fernando,
I’m going commando,”
Was Tom’s quite expansive reply.

To go commando (or freeball) means to not wear underwear beneath one’s outerwear. When women do it, it is called going commanda.

fifty-five fiction
In fifty-five fiction, you write
A short story that’s pithy and tight:
Beginning to middle
To ending—don’t twiddle.
You’ve fifty-five words to delight.

55-fiction is an entire story in exactly 55 words. The limerick above has exactly fifty-five words.

fingers of god
The voyeur in our town, people say,
Is most active at twilight each day.
Comes the dusk, in the gloom,
He’ll peer into your room,
So they call him “Crepuscular Ray.”

Crepuscular means “related to twilight.” Crepuscular rays (or fingers of God) are the rays of sunlight that are seen coming from between the clouds at or near sunset.

fire followers
Though some never see them revive,
After blazes, the burn species thrive.
To germinate, fire
Is what they require;
When they bloom, the burnt hills come alive.

Certain wildflowers have seeds that can stay viable for up to a century. They return to life in the year or two following fires. Heat shock and some chemical components in smoke prompt their hard-coated seeds to germinate in an area that fire has helped to eliminate competition.

fanny pack
With salami I filled my new belly pack,
So I guess I had made it a deli pack.
After riding my bike
And a five-hour hike,
…

it wouldn’t be a proper summer hiatus if it didn’t end on a cliffhanger. therefore, to ensure interest in words that start with f in the fall, i have omitted the final line and will post it with renewed vigor come autumn. after a 5 hour hike, will the narrator’s fanny pack remain intact? and what will happen to the narrator’s salami? you will have to wait and see!

to my fellow travelers

this f-word post is the first since the exciting conclusion of word idol and the crowning of its champion, fourings. but fear not, fellow metallica fans. just as we can all count on ulrich and hetfield to crank out an eternal barrage of face-melting power ballads, so too can we count on ol’ raynor ganan to golden shower us with words that start with the letter f.

this week’s dictionary is one that i keep close to my heart, literally (literally literally) as it is one of only 12 reference books that is forever plugged-in to the bespoke book seat which rests on my desk, a mere 71.12 centimeters from my ticker¹. here are some select f-words from the penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory:

• fabulation: a term used to describe the anti-novel. fabulation involves allegory, verbal acrobatics and surrealistic effects.
• facetiae: a bookseller’s term for humorous or obscene books.
• faction: a portmanteau word which denotes fiction which is based on and combined with fact.
• fazetie: a german term for a clever, witty, well-phrased anecdote which may or may not be bawdy and/or erotic.
• federal theatre project: an enterprise inaugurated in the USA in 1935 to provide employment for people in the theatre and to offer more entertainment during the Depression.
• fellow travelers: a phrase used by Trotsky to describe soviet authors who accepted the 1917 Revolution without necessarily accepting Bolshevik ideology, who maintained that literature should not be subject to political tenets or coercion.
• festschrift: a symposium compiled in honour of a distinguished scholar or writer; an ‘homage volume.’
• ficción: a genre invented by the Argentine poet and critic Jorge Luis Borges. A ficción is a story-essay which glosses human dreams and illusions. It is ironical in tone and also didactic.
• ficcelle: Henry James’s term for the confidante character whose role within the novel is the elicit information, which is conveyed to the reader without narratorial intervention.
• flyting: a cursing match in verse²; especially between two poets who hurl abuse at each other.
• four levels of meaning: Dante explains the four levels as: (a) the literal or historical meaning; (b) the moral meaning; (c) the allegorical meaning; and (d) the anagogical.
• fustian: formerly a coarse cloth made of cotton and flax; now a thick, twilled cotton cloth. In the 16th C. it was used to describe inflated, turgid language.

__

1. and if i had situs inversus, it would only be 63.5 centimeters away.
2. watch your back, bro-dog. i am still gunning for you.

a holorime scheme

Reine, reine gueux éveille.
Gomme à gaine, en horreur, taie.

this french poem translates to something like, “queen, queen arouse the rabble/ who will use their girdles—horrors—as pillow slips.” though if you read it aloud slowly, it starts to mean something very different in english.

this poem is from an ingenious collection called: mots d’heures: gousses, rames. (get it?) by luis d’antin van rooten (1966).

incidentally, the type of wordplay in action here is called a holorime, a short poem made up entirely of homophonous verse.

the adventures of alfred tennyson and charles babbage

charles babbage, the english mathematician and father of the modern computer wrote the following to alfred tennyson in response to his poem, “the vision of sin” »

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

… If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 ¹/₁₆ is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 ¹/₁₆ will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.”

sapless like a withered flower

wiener problems are embarrassing to write about but usually make for a very entertaining read. such is the case with john wilmot’s “the imperfect enjoyment” which tackles the heavy-hitting subject of premature ejaculation (or for discretion when talking about it with your doctor: pee period ee period).

proceed with caution: the following excerpt is enn-ess-eff-double-you in the way that only bawdy restoration poetry can be (it contains a very vulgar word that rhymes with cunt):

But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent,
And rage at last confirms me impotent.
Ev’n her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms no more
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore.
Trembling, confused, despairing, limber, dry,
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point, oft tried,
With virgin blood ten thousand maids have dyed;
Which nature still directed with such art
That it through every cunt reached every heart —
Stiffly resolved, ‘twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor aught its fury stayed:
Where’er it pierced, a cunt it found or made —
Now languid lies in this unhappy hour,
Shrunk up and sapless like a withered flower.