National Poetry Month is almost over

[tzikeh]

I was going to offer something from my current British Literature course, but I'm so unbelievably tired of it at the moment (and I need a humor interval, stat), so I'm offering this little confenction instead. Written by Jeff Brechlin à la William Shakespeare, it is the winning entry for the February 23, 2003 Washington Post's Style Invitational.

The challenge: "Take any extremely banal piece of familiar writing, such as a garment's laundry-care tag or instructions on how to set a VCR or a computer error message, and rewrite it in the style of a famous writer, poet or lyricist..."

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

To all the fabulous English teachers and profs and docs out there: wouldn't it be great to put this on an exam and ask your students to give two or, if they can, three examples of how this piece does not properly map to the English sonnet form of the Shakespearean era?

Yes, my students are going to hate me, why do you ask?

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Yes, my students are going to hate me, why do you ask?

But you'll have fun. And that's the important part.

I say this as someone who used to make my students write a short essay using the rules of Uncleftish Beholding (http://www.grijalvo.com/Citas/Peculiar_English.htm) to teach them to use the OED, and give a morphology assignment of "Tell me everything you can learn about the grammar of Quenya by comparing the text of Galadriel's Lament to the English translation." (Actually, if you throw in the two other sentences of fully glossed Quenya from LotR, you can learn quite a lot; I even had some students pick up on the dual.)

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Well -- it's only ten lines, for a start. I don't remember anyone suggesting that it did map to the sonnet form, properly or otherwise; iambic pentameter turns up lots of places that aren't sonnets. (I mean, okay, the rhyme scheme is there. What there is of it, anyway.)

Heh.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I don't remember anyone suggesting that it did map to the sonnet form, properly or otherwise;

No - no one did. I'm just saying it would make for a fun question to use in order for the student to prove that he understands the form.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

OMG Quenya morphemes FTW. Just remind your students to luithio lin palanlamath before class.

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

Well...the last three lines don't scan.

There are only ten (instead of 14 lines), and thus it's missing an entire quatrain.

There isn't a setup of the idea, a change of idea, and then a resolution.

Typically Elizabethan sonnets revolved around a beloved or an object of adoration.

It's clever, to be sure. But.