Ken, since your name rhymes with "tarmac" , maybe you can at least one
airport in New Jersey. Think, the good sound, "The plane is now arriving at
Womack", etc.
s
> Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>> Here's an aspect of meter that we never covered during any of the past
>> donnybrooks: its usefulness for marching. No army ever advanced to
>> free verse. So, earlier today, as I slogged through the day-old snow
>> in the improbable forest that borders my lodgings, I realized that I
>> was keeping cadence by humming, over and over, "I think that I shall
>> never see-ee-ee/ a pome beauteeful as a tree-ee-ee." Curse you, Joyce
>> Kilmer!
>>
>> Mark
>
> Desultory comments--my office was shut down today.
>
> Marching verse. "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold and his
> cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold." Nice beat but can you dance
> to it?
>
> Or this--
>
> "Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
> And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
> He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
> But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
> Bess, the landlord's daughter,
> Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair."
>
> Actually that's less of a marching tune than the Byron, Noyes was really
> going for it and it's way more sophisticated than I remembered,
> considering I haven't read it since high school. "The Highwayman" is as
> hammy as hell and was turned into an appropriately hammy movie in 1951.
> Dan O'Herlihy who I recall had some swash and buckle. Would've been a
> perfect role for Flynn.
>
> My equivalent: coming out of a concert or opera humming a tune. Unless
> you're James Levine, you can't come out of the opera whistling passages
> from Lulu or Satyagraha </html/compositions/satyagraha.html> either
> (actually with some Glass like "Contrary Motion" you've got a prayer
> because it keeps looping). For that matter try whistling some Bartok,
> Duke Bluebeard's Castle. People will look at you funny.
>
> Joyce Kilmer has more stuff in New Jersey named after him than half a
> dozen former Governors. That tells you the level of politics in this
> state. He was born in New Brunswick and graduated from Rutgers. He has
> a school named after him (at least one) and a rest stop on the Jersey
> Turnpike. There's a memorial forest in North Carolina named for him'
> God knows why it's in N.C. except maybe it was in Jersey and was paved
> over to put up a parking lot.
>
> In grammar school, where I didn't learn any, we had to sing "Trees."
> Every time we got to the word "breast" we all sniggered. I just went
> back and read the poem. It's every bit as bad as I remembered. The Old
> Formalism, perhaps? *I* deserve stuff named after me, only my stuff
> doesn't rhyme and when I say "breast" it's not going to get a laugh out
> of anyone. I hope.
>
> Ken
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