VRZHU bullets of pure love

hey--answers

I'm back in the sidesaddle, and here are the answers to our quiz.

This is going to expose my geekish immaturity re. everything, but the douse (sing. of dice (analogously to 1 mice= mouse(tip o’ th’ hat to Margaret G. for this))) is cast. Ridicule and snigger up your shirt sleeves, those of you who would do so.

1.

Count four.
Open the door.
You're in room
without any floor.

From Michael Swanick’s Vacuum Flowers.  It’s the rhyme-key that the main character, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark/Eucrasia Walsh, uses to access another character’s (Wyeth)  personality, which she had previously reprogrammed into four distinct persons (warrior, leader, mystic and clown (or fool)). I mean “access” in the same way that a technician at the Apple “Genius Bar” would run diagnostics and generally fiddle with the software and hardware on your iMac (should that be “on youMac”--?).  It may not come across –ectomied from the rest of the book as it is, but there’s something haunting and a little unheimlich about those last two lines. Brr.

Michael Swanick, like many good writers who mostly ply the science fiction field, has a refreshingly journeyman-ish approach to writing: learn your craft, work hard, persevere, talent only goes so far, be a professional.

He also runs a blog with poetry, where he will put up a poem and comment.  These are usually classics, and, where they are contemporary, he honorably puts up just the beginning lines, as the poem is under copyright. Another sign of a professional who respects profession.

2.

Pull out his eyes,
Apologize,
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes.
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologize.

Putting this together I was hoping to recover ditties from the realm of poetry or, barring that, from(ish) the literary canon.  But brain functionality was not at the requisite level.  So I ended up with obvious ones from so-called high culture, and others from so-called low culture: genres of male adolescence in perpetuity, comics, kid’s cartoons, the movies.

Ditty number two is naturally from Jim Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  I read a stanza break after the second “Pull out his eyes.”   Joyce is, as James Longenbach points out, a great writer of lines, even here, with the most elementary of elements.

3.

So Little Boy Blue, come blow your top
And cut it right down to the quick.
Don't sit home and cry
On the Fourth of July,
Around now you're hitting the bricks.

Origin: Winemaker F. F. Coppola’s still underappreciated movie, One From The Heart.  Natassa Kinski sings this Tom Waits song to Fred Ward, wherein she is billboard-sized and blue (like the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin™, but way hotter). This is the second or third stanza, I think. Meanwhile, Fred’s SO, Terri Garr (we love you, Terri!) is off having an encounter of her own with monsieur Raul Julia. OFTH is a wonderfully emotionally satisfying flick, in an earned-with-interest way.  Aside: Ms. Garr (w.l.y., T!) is the best female guest actor to appear in the archo-Star Trek series. I brush aside any comments to the contrary with ill-concealed contempt. 

4.

"Tenser," said the Tensor,
"Tenser," said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension
and dissension have begun.

Another from the sci-fi/scientifiction/speculative fiction world of letters. This is hard to admit, but this is the kind of stuff I remember, as opposed to, say, the whole of Lycidas.  If  I wasn’t such a poseur, I’d be a dilettante.

From Holiday magazine editor Alfred Bester’s the Demolished Man.  It’s the earworm that the protagonist uses to fend off the intrusive mental fingers of telepaths (Espers!). It’s just like the real world, where everyone—save you, Dear Reader—can peruse your thoughts like so much teleprompterese. Yes, you are a blind man in the country of the all-seeing.  Didn’t you *know* that?
 
5.

Parsley, parsley,
Priggle the pear
Under the bamboozle bush.

From Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic. This particular songette was collected in “Potluck Pogo,” I think. 

6.

I fell head over heels just four evenings ago
With a girl I'm sure you all know,
But I couldn't hold her,
And that's why I sold her,
To Lucius McGonaghal Sloe.

From Tom Disch’s short story The Man Who Had No Idea in the eponymous collection. The protagonist, who is The Man Who Has No Idea, meets an elderly and famous women poet.  For some reason, TMWHNI inspires the poet and he gives a list of prompts, the penultimate of which results in the above.

The prompt was, and I quote:

“a poem justifying capital punishment in cases where one has been abandoned by one’s lover.” (This, in its final, expanded form, was to become then longest poem in her next collection, “The Ballad of Lucius McGonaghal Sloe, which begins:

I fell head over heels just four evenings ago
With a girl I'm sure you all know,
But I couldn't hold her,
And that's why I sold her,
To Lucius McGonaghal Sloe.

and continues in a similar vein for another one hundred and thirty-six stanzas.)”

Worth extracting is this slightly earlier exchange between the Man Who and the poet:

“Now I’m likable! I thought—” He dangled the poem by one corner. “—you were just hinting that I should leave?”

“Nonsense. You haven’t finished your beer. You musn’t hold what I write against me. Poets can’t be held responsible for what they say in their poems. We’re all compulsive traitors, you know.”

Barry said nothing, but his expression must have conveyed his disapproval.

"Now don’t be like that.  Treason is part of the job, the way that handling trash-cans is part of being a garbage man. Some poets go to a great deal of trouble to disguise their treacheries; my inclination is to be up-front and betray everyone right from the start.”

7.

Drizzle, drazzle,
Druzzle drome,
Time for zis vun
to come home.

From an early 60’s cartoon, Mr. Wizard.  In each episode Tutor (or Tooter) Turtle entreats Mr. Wizard (a lizard with an Eastern European Jewish accent) to magicify him into a new career/life/destiny, such as big game hunter, pirate, circus acrobat. When this inevitably turned into a life-endangering catastrophe, TT would shout in a paroxysm of fear “Halp me, Mr. Wizard.”  Mr. Wizard would return Turtle safely to the Wiz’s hollow tree house.

8.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear
Prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

From Thomas Stearns Eliot’s 1930 poem, The Hollow Men.

9.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Origin: Also, naturally, The Hollow Men.  The Nursery Rhyme this derives from starts with a nine syllable line:

Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush.
Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush
On a cold and frosty morning.

To go along with the tune, I want to read Eliot’s lines as

This is the way the world will end,
And so on. Eight syllables.  Eliot’s actual line is only seven syllables and only works with the tune of the original nursery rhyme if you stretch out “world” something like whirl-uld.  But that seems wrong.

So was Eliot deliberately bringing the line up short deliberately, to throw us off, or was his ear a bit off here?

To sum up:

Nothing makes poetry happen.

Poetry listens to nobody.

Most poets are the unacknowledged poets of the world.

Stay tuned...

Our usual Saturday Video will be delayed due to technical difficulties, tryptophan-induced coma, cuisine- related injuries, and indolence.

See you in the next day or two....

Also answers to our quiz...

Tuesday Vrzhu - Identify the doggerel

Answers in tomorrow's the next an upcoming post.

1.

Count four.
Open the door.
You're in room
without any floor.

2.

Pull out his eyes,
Apologize,
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes.
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologize.

3.

So Little Boy Blue, come blow your top
And cut it right down to the quick.
Don't sit home and cry
On the Fourth of July,
Around now you're hitting the bricks.

4.

"Tenser," said the Tensor,
"Tenser," said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension
and dissension have begun.

 

5.

Parsley, parsley,
Priggle the pear
Under the bamboozle bush.

6.

I fell head over heels just four evenings ago
With a girl I'm sure you all know,
But I couldn't hold her,
And that's why I sold her,
To Lucius McGonaghal Sloe.

7.

Drizzle, drazzle,
Druzzle drome,
Time for zis vun
to come home.

8.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear
Prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

9.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sunday Vrzhu Image Clearance Sale

I was saving these to accompany some witty/scintillating/ironic/perceptive commentary/counterpoint. William Logan/Adam Kirsch/Carmine Starnino would have quaked in their mukluks.  Not gonna happen. (Special thanks to Toothpaste for Dinner and Buttersafe.)

Saturday vrzhu

Tuezhday Vrzhu

More on poetry and politics:

Poetic material has no voice. It does not paint and it does not express itself in words. It knows no form, and by the same token it is devoid of content for the simple reason that it exists only in performance. The finished work is nothing but a calligraphic product, the inevitable result of the performing impulse. If a pen is dipped into an inkwell, the work created, stopped in its tracks, is nothing but a stock of letters, fully commensurate with the inkwell.

-Osip Mandelstam

As I've said recently, Mandelstam wrote two "political" poems in his life, one good, one bad.

***

So I was at an Apple store, one of those visions out of Sleeper, waiting to find out (warning - spoiler ahead) that it would cost more to fix our computer than the computer is worth.  Maybe it's me, but I always have a feeling of sensory deprivation in these stores, there's just not enough to look at. Did a bring a book? Well, I bring a book everywhere, so, no, of course not, no book or reading material of any kind. Reading the synopses on software  packages is fairly unrewarding, but there was a wall of software boxes, so I stared at those and read the backs of the one's that seemed interesting. 

Now, there were a bunch of software for screenwriting and writing a novel: Screenwriter, Final Draft, WriterPal, HemingWii, NovelPro (not their real names). And nestled among them was QuickVerse. QuickVerse! I perked up. Possibilities flashed through my circuits:

• Rhymol - provides rhymes for any word including slant rhymes, and what other poems throughout the history of poetry that used the same ones
• Metafix - corrects mixed metaphors as you type
• Schemer - set to a poetic form and it will provide a template for filling it in. Let's say you're writing a Petrarchan sonnet. After the first line it will list all possible rhymes for the first, fourth, fifth and eighth line, along with probability factors for which words makes the most sense based on the first line
• Youlipo - assists in designing, choosing and (the most boring part) completing a constraint based writing using old and new Oulipian techne
• Obscore - allows you to adjust the percent foregrounding of several language based concepts: materiality of the word, fragmentation, fibonaccization, etc.

It turns out QuickVerse is "Bible Study Software." Not even a mention of hermenuetics, either. I was crushed. But it shows that the argument for poetry's increased profile these days is still lacking hard data and may be premature. Or mistaken.

I guess we'll have to keep making poems the old-fashioned way. Using Microsoft Word and an online rhyming dictionary.

***

What with Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I'd reprint a classic Vrzhu post that may or may not be pertinent. Below.

Robert Frost vs. Hungarian Cuisine

(a Vrzhu Classic Post Reprint, Vol. 1, No. 2)

Why is Vrzhu blogging a recipe today?

Well, there is precedent. But that is insufficient.

So, by way of justification. . .

“Jay Parini, a Frost scholar and professor at Middlebury College, also described the difficulty of reading Frost’s “chicken scrawlish” handwriting.” 

–from “Editing of Frost Notebooks in Dispute” By Motoko Rich - New York Times, Jan. 22, 2008 

We here at Vrzhu have been puzzling over the reference in the quote above to the traditional Hungarian dish, Chicken Scrawlish.  Perhaps Mr. Parini was giving a tip of the hat to Hungary as one of the great producers of world-class poets, far in excess of larger countries, with a respect for and tradition of poetry comparable to, say, Ireland? Or is he referring to the rumor that, while in England, Frost was able to employ an immigrant Hungarian as a housekeeper for about a month in the fall of 1913, and afterwards Frost would sometimes make a folksy reference to her “chicken scrawlish?.”

This is indeed a riddle inside an enigma wrapped in a flour tortilla. But Vrzhu is in search of a key.

To start, here is an unpublished article from Gourmand Monthly we have obtained which sheds some light on the culinary trompe langue that is Chicken Scrawlish.

Chicken Scrawlish (Chicken Szcralís) – Originally a peasant dish from the Northern Medium Mountain region of northern Hungary, which is part of the Southern Carpathian Mountains of  southwestern Slovakia.  A dense stew that is formed into loaves for the winter, Chicken Scrawlish is undoubtedly the least popular dish in Hungary.  Georgi Mandi, a noted culinary archivist, has said that “If paprikash is considered the royalty of Hungarian cooking, then the concoction known as Chicken Scrawlish must be rated as Hungary’s failed apprentice pig herder." Famed Hungarian chef Egbert Esterhaszy concurs: “To a Hungarian, paprikash, sausage, poppy seed noodles—these all say “mother.” Chicken Scrawlish, on the other hand, says “idiot third cousin kept hidden from company in the root cellar.”

But generally, most Hungarians either deny the existence of a dish called Chicken Scrawlish, or vociferously insist that it is not Hungarian but Slovakian. At the same time, Slovak citizens in the Carpathian mountains across the border from Hungary will swear that only a Hungarian would be able to eat a dish like chicken scrawlish. There are local city ordinances still extant stating that “persons found to have a loaf or block of Szcralis on their body or among their belongings will be fined 1,000 korunas.” 

These laws may have been an attempt to discourage “Scrawlishmen.” Because of the difficulties inherent in preparing Chicken Scrawlish, it became common for unemployed men or men who had fallen off their horses onto their heads to become itinerant Chicken Scrawlish vendors, or Scrawlishmen, going from farm to farm and village to village trying to trick the more slatternly wives into buying a jar of potted Scrawlish.  Often runners from one farm would speed ahead to the next farm to warn of the approaching Scrawlishman, so that an adequate supply of stones of sufficient heft could be gathered to throw at him.

Despite this, dedicated, perhaps foolhardy, foodies, inspired by culinary adventurers (such as Anthony Bordain) who sample puffin jerky, or warthog chitterlings, have been looking for a traditional recipe—or any recipe—for the infamous Chicken Scrawlish.

Recently, American investigatory cooks, Jack and Michelle Gurning, have interviewed several immigrants from the region, and found a recipe for the dish hidden in an old bible written in Hungarian. The recipe was on previously-used vellum and sandwiched between pages of the Book of Revelation.  The Gurnings, in their book, Into Thick Soup –  A Personal Account of Delight and Disaster Amongst the Wild Dishes of the Carpathians, provide their deciphered and translated rendition of the recipe.  Their only introductory description of Chicken Scrawlish is “a dish only H. P. Lovecraft could love. Or adequately describe.”

Chicken Scrawlish

One unplucked chicken, preferably dead.
16 oz rendered badger fat
4 oz dry-cured chicken liver
18 oz unhulled groats
2 teaspoons rock salt
2 teaspoons chopped baitfish, such as minnow
6 to 8 cups goat broth, or squirrel broth
1 cup chopped celery root
1 cup chopped sun-dried beet
1 cup chopped kohlrabi, root and leaves.
1/2 cup onion grass
4 oz juniper berries
1 teaspoon hot paprika
1 teaspoon devil’s parsley
¼ cup hyssop sour wine or hyssop white vinegar.
¼ cup woodruff jam

1. First, the chicken must be “saddled.” After gutting the bird, spatchcock it*, retaining the neck and head. Press it flat, pulling to extend the wings and legs as much as possible.

2. Place the spatchcocked chicken between the saddle and the horse, feathered side down (alternatively the chicken may be pressed between two goats).  After a three day ride** remove the chicken and soak in 5 gallons of water mixed with one cup of lye for at least 24 hours, making sure the neck and head of the chicken are draped over the side of the pot to vent properly.

3. Drain, rinse and dry the chicken.  At this point the feathers should have formed a fused  bed underneath the meat. Carefully peel back the feather bed from the chicken and discard some distance from any habitation.  The chicken should be tender and malleable at this point, translucent with a gelatinous consistency.

4. Soak the groats until tender. Soak the dry cured chicken livers until al dente and then grind finely along with the rock salt and chopped baitfish.

5. Drain the groats, put them into a large mixing bowl and add badger fat, celery root, sun-dried beet, kohlrabi, onion grass, juniper berries, hot paprika and devil’s parsley. Stir in the chicken liver mixture. Beat until the mixture is slightly glutinous. Stir in the goat or squirrel broth.

6. Force the chicken through a sieve into the groat mixture, taking care not to put your face or hands directly over the bowl.

7. Cover the bowl with wire mesh and a damp cloth and allow to ferment outside for about 1 hour.

8. Stir and pour into a large dutch oven.  Cook in a 325 degree oven for about 3 hours. If the Scrawlish dries out DO NOT add water! Discard immediately. Either start over or lead a Christian life.***

At this point the Chicken Scrawlish can be served as a stew, the so-called White Scrawlish.  It is customarily served on a bed of boiled nettles as a late supper after the men have returned home drunk. But typically, much larger amounts of Chicken Scrawlish were made and some of the scrawlish was “put up” in loaves.

For Chicken Scrawlish Loaf, or Black Scrawlish

9. Let the Scrawlish settle and then pour off as much of the top fluid as possible.

10. Turn the Scrawlish out onto a floured board and knead for about 20 minutes, alternately adding the Hyssop vinegar and Woodruff jam, until it is elastic and not too lumpy.  At this point the Scrawlish dough should be unpleasant to look at and touch. You can’t really get used to it. Form into a roughly loaf-shaped mass and place on a baking sheet you intend to discard afterwards.  Bake at 275 degrees for 12 hours in a very well-ventilated room.

11. Remove and allow the loaf to cool completely.  The loaf will keep indefinitely. Loaves were often passed down from generation to generation.

Serves all or none

Nutritional information: unknown.

To conclude, as the dish migrated down from the Carpathians into the plains and cities of Hungary, it was considerably tamed.  However, it retained its air of mystery as a “special” dish, and throughout most the 19th century the eating of it was considered a venal sin.

*To spatchcock a fowl: Place the bird breast side down on as clean a surface as you can find. Using a very sharp knife cut from the neck to the tail end along both sides of the backbone to remove. This takes some force. Make a small slit in the cartilage at the bottom end of the breast bone, then with both hands placed on the rib cage, crack open the bird by opening it, like a book, towards the cutting surface.  This will reveal the keel bone. Run you fingers up along wither side of the cartilage in between in between the breasts to loosen it from the flesh, then grab the keel bone and pull it up to remove it, along with the attached cartilage.  Flip over and smooth the skin.  The bird is now spatchcocked.

**Although a three day ride is sufficient for an authentic Chicken Scrawlish, Scrawlishes were often distinguished and rated by the length of time continuously “saddled.” In addition to this recipe of Three Day Scrawlish, there was Five Day Scrawlish, Eight Day Scrawlish, and for special occasions, Campaign Scrawlish, where the chicken was “saddled” for an entire military campaign or until the rider returned home.  This Scrawlish was also called “Funeral Scrawlish” or “Missing Limb Scrawlish.”

*** The exact meaning of this sentence in the original is in dispute. The original recipe continues: “Immediately start a novena for protection against the Unclean One. And spit thrice upon leaving or entering the house for the following week.” 

MAPS

What does poetry map to?

I don't know, but here are some maps of recent and continuing interest.

Over at the Scientific America site, there's a sweet slide show that maps the recent election according to electoral votes, population, state and county.

And If I haven't pointed this out before, Worldmapper is an excellent and evolving site that maps by almost any category you can name.  At present, it contains 366 maps, each related to a particular subject.

Equal Land Area

Books Published

Films Watched

Secondary Education Spending Growth

Sunday Daybook entries

Language, fiction, cannot contain, possess, transmit, or even entirely limn, any actuality; it cannot satisfy, as the solution to an equation is said to do. To suppose that it aims to do so, critic John Bayley has written, “implies some misunderstanding of poetic tradition: the language of poetry has never claimed to convey the nature of such horrors but more simply its power to transform them: paradoxically a more modest task.”

The sticks and stones of the powerful and the brutal can do harm, but we are right to assert that words—fictions—can never hurt us. Nor can they help, at least not as we are tempted to think they might . . . if managed correctly. All fiction, all poetry, can only transform, momentarily, before our eyes, and only until the world outside literature reasserts itself again. Nothing has changed, but our spirits have been washed, and we do not forget. It is the kind of trick whose failure at actual magic is subsumed in its success as apparent magic.

--John Crowley

Extra credit:

1. Apply to the desire of poetry to be politically efficacious.
2. Apply to Prospero in the Tempest as an examplar.

***

He opened up a whole new world of sound and meter, and he taught me the specific gravity of English words, whose relative weight, as in all languages, is ultimately determined by poetic usage and standards

--Hannah Arendt, writing about Randall Jarrell

I love that phrase, the specific gravity of English words.

***

Warning to Children

Robert Graves

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives - he then unties the string.

Every time I'm ready to give up on Robert Graves, I find something like this.  Also, though it has a killer opening line, I'm beginning to think that To Juan at the Winter Solstice is overrated. 

Review of Dan Vera's The Space Between Our Danger and Delight

Colin Kelly has posted a review of Dan Vera's The Space Between Our Danger and Delight over on his blog, Modern Confessional, and included a poem from the collection, Father's Day for Gay Boys. TSBODAD was published by Vrzhu's fraternal twin press (or younger sibling press?), Beothuk Books.  Thanks, Collin, you are the soul of generosity!  T. S. Bodad?

Saturday Vrzhu Viddyread

Nicanor Parra: