Tuesday, April 24, 2012

"Dippity Bix" and "Chimpanzee," by Kath and Kim (Gina Riley and Jane Turner)

Pitch perfect: Australian versifiers, Kath and Kim.
"Dippity Bix"
Kim: You know what, mum. I've stopped my all-cabbage diet. I don't think it's healthy to eat just one thing.
Kath: Well Gwen Paltrow just had an Apple.
Kim: Huh?
Kath: Well that's what she's called her new baby. Apple. I think that must be all she's eaten since she had her by the luhks. You'd be wise to take a leave-out of Gwen's book, Kim.
Kim: So what are you saying? I should rename Epponnee-Rae*, Dippity Bix?
Kath: Yeah! Dippity Bix Cocoa Bomb Footy Frank.
Kim: Actually, Footy Frank is quite pretty.
Kath: Yeah, Footy Frank, it is, isn't it?

*Her baby daughter, whose full name is Epponnee Raelene Kathleen Darlene Charlene Craig.

"Chimpanzee"
Kim: Oh look mum. Another present I got for Epponnee: The Bath Book version of The Da Vinci Code. Look, It squeaks when you press the albino.
Kath: Who do I still need to buy for, Kim? I've got my health professionals: My Physio, my Ostio, my Chiro and my Gyno. They're all getting bottles of Cock Fighter, so that's done. Now my service providers: I've got my Posti, my Garbo, my Recycle's Man, my Coles Online Guy -- still need to get something for them.
Kim: I still gotta get something good for Bret. You know he's really into labels now.
Kath: Oh really, what, stick-on or iron-on, cause we go down to Office Works for that.
Kim: No, mum. Clothes. Designer labels. You know, Dolci and Kabanna, Tony Hellfinger, Louise Futon.
Kath: Oh, gee. Who's he dressing to impress? Actually, I got Bret's present. It's great. It's the John Grisham newy, The Firm Client. Actually, that sounds a bit more like Kel [her husband], doesn't it?
Kim: But Bret doesn't read at the moment. Now he's a workaholic.
Kath: Yeah, I've noticed, he's very driven at the moment, isn't he, Kim? I have to say, I think it suits him. He did look very spunky going off in his Yugo Boss this morning.
Kim: Yeah, he's got his sites set on the top. You know, eventually, he wants to be owner-manager.
Kath: Oh, that's really kudosses, Kim. Being a franchisee. Gee, one day I'd like to be a franchisee, Kim.
Kim: Well you look more like a Chimpanzee today.

__________
                                                     This week's editor: Zireaux


If Kath and Kim were ever told they spoke the language of poetry, they'd be the first to give earnest impassioned readings at the Fountain Gate bookstore and pawn their own chapbooks at the gym. Playing fools in the name of beauty is what they do best.

The Australian creators of this TV comedy, meanwhile -- Gina Riley and Jane Turner -- are poets to the core. They understand that when it comes to language -- in this case, the vernacular of the suburban Melbourne shopping mall -- sound and sense are the poetic equivalent of costume and character. "Kel says my hair is my clowning glory," boasts Kath about her frizzy white poodle-fro. And there you have it, all four elements of the comedic art form expressed in a single line.

In so much of Riley/Turner's work, their ear is near perfect. Metrically, for example, "Epponnee-Rae" and "Dippity Bix" would be called choriambs (stresses on the first and last sounds of a tetrasyllable), and their identical scansion is no accident. But the two baby names are also excellent examples of why common scansion alone -- the dissection of feet into stressed/unstressed patterns, as scholars have been doing for centuries -- is really a cheating of sound. Because sound itself divides into tones (or notes) and cadence (or rhythm), as I tried to show in my post on Notorious B.I.G..

So although the scansion is the same, Swinburne's "...senseless of passion," or Coleridge's "Down to the sunless...," sound nothing at all like Shakespeare's "flibbertigibbit" (which, in fact, more closely resembles the short rapid-fire air-bursts of "Dippity Bix"). After the swooping landing of Coleridge's, "Down," the mouth must stand up again and brush itself off before delivering, "to the sunless." "Flibbertigibbet," on the other hand, is a happy triple-flip of the tongue. "I should rename Epponnee-Rae, Raspberry Cream," would have produced exactly the same scansion, but with a very different rhythm, a very different effect.

Fascinating in its failure:
the American Kath and Kim
American TV attempted its own version of Kath and Kim, which was fascinating in its failure. Sense and sound (and rhythm), character and costume -- the harmony of these elements were sacrificed in favor of the premise, or the idea: A grown-up married daughter coming home to live with her mother.
But I'll say it again: Ideas are not what poetry is about. Poetry is spoken music (some might say written music, but I'm less convinced of this, unless we equate reading with hearing, which seems a stretch). The Australian Kath has no qualms showing off her fanny-fissure, or trying on -- and spilling out of -- a Burberry bikini, or putting on that perpetual vulgar teenage girl expression, the rolling eyes and exasperated flip of the hair, which looks even funnier on the grown-up Riley. Excessiveness, outrageousness -- a realm that's ripe for poetry.

The American version of "Kath and Kim," however, was too concerned with meaning, too afraid to let sound and costume speak for themselves, too poetically restrained. It has, in fact, a very strong odor of the Lolita-Charlotte relationship -- think Sue Lyon and Shelly Winters in the film, Lolita -- a particularly American flavor of mother-daughter relationship which Nabokov netted in his novel; and from which Americans may never be able to escape.

"It squeaks when you press the albino" is a poetic phrase, in the manner of the anapestic limerick. And note the perfect rhyme with gyno in Kath's subsequent line (with both characters stretching out the "aiye-no" sound). Poetic, too, is "kudosses, Kim." But perhaps most lovely, and rich with poetic depth, is the coupling of the words "franchisee" with "chimpanzee." They have an aural relationship; yet no common rhyme form. They're not that rarest species of rhyme -- the gimmal; and yet the simian-coated Kath saying, "gee, one day I'd like to be a franchisee," still takes us on a pleasure-journey across the broadest spectrum of metaphor, from vulgar job title to Christmas shopping ape-woman; a trip, or trope, which Nabokov himself would surely have admired.
-Z
__________
You'll find information about this week's editor Zireaux, as well as his latest books, verse and commentary, at www.ImmortalMuse.com. This week he examines one of Edgar Allan Poe's earliest poems, "Dreams." 


We do hope you'll take some time to enjoy the other Tuesday Poem posts this week, listed in the right-hand sidebar.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Poets' Birthday by The Tuesday Poets 2012

The shyest sparrow's supplications in the early evening trees
are a careful arpeggio - each note liberates a flotilla of leaves
fleeting, indeed, left scattered as archipelago in a dew-grass 
sea.  
The song's begun: feathered entreaties lift from every hedgerow, every
field, join in one great arc of beak and wing and downy plume --
brief benediction for the worker trudging home, a heart-lifted pause
at day's end. Summer's pages fall. Leaf by leaf, they shorten days,
strip bare the trunks, spill forth a concertina of split, sagging plums,
crimson globes -- Demeter's heart strung low against the blue note 
sky. Furrowed fields lie flat beneath the tramp of corn-fed feet.

The scene is set, two candles lit, another year opens a window 
through which we pass in streak of silver, burst of wheels' screech, breath
of horns' bright blasting. Inside, the chink of glass against china,
bubble of laughter tossed from one guest to the next draws us
to warmth, the blissful promise of shared experience. How it swells
the soul's bright plumage! A winking flame copies itself on the clean
slope of the knife before it passes. The reflection flickers: and beyond 
the window frame, a final guest hesitates in mauve-hued shadow, ghost 
of Keats maybe, listening still, reticent, reluctant to eschew 
autumn's arias. And hear now, along the bay, 

the pulse of song ticks out again in joyous iteration, a boy kicks 
a ball against a wall, a sole finch adds bebop syncopationGabble, 
and its consistency of warm honey dampen the tenor, the tune -- best
left out in the tang of sharpened daylight. Shadows unwilling to retreat
stand shoulder-to-shoulder and beat the day's thrum chanting come, cold,
come, dark, come firelight, we too have our part. Gladly, watch effulgence fade,
into this gentler glow of murmured crackle and spark-fed thoughts. Each year
is gathered and falls away in a clap of digits, up from nothing to where
we find ourselves surrounded. It's come to this: the riffle of breath, the winking
flame. One is out, then the other. Stay with us, poet, it's time to start over.  

A global birthday poem written line by line by 26 poets from six countries and 12 cities over two weeks: from Tuesday April 3 to April 17 2012. It has been written to celebrate our second birthday. 

The Tuesday Poets are (in order of their lines): Melissa Green, Claire Beynon, Saradha Koirala, Janis Freegard, T. Clear, Catherine Bateson, Renee Liang, Elizabeth Welsh, Alicia Ponder, Tim Jones, Kathleen Jones, Helen McKinlay, Helen Lowe, Eileen Moeller, Orchid Tierney, Susan T. Landry, Keith Westwater, Belinda Hollyer, Harvey Molloy, Bernadette Keating, Andrew M. Bell, Michelle Elvy, Catherine Fitchett, P.S. Cottier, Helen Rickerby, Mary McCallum.

Unable to post this year: Sarah Jane Barnett, Robert Sullivan, Zireaux, Emma McCleary 

                                            Editor: Mary McCallum, TP co-curator

Tuesday Poem is two years old, and The Poets' Birthday is a magnificent way to celebrate. It kicked off on April 3 with a line from Boston poet Melissa Green, title: Birthday Poem (working title) and has been criss-crossing the globe ever since like a digital marathon, with all the adrenalin and excitement you can imagine it generating. 

The posts were twice a day, usually around 8 am and 6 pm NZ Time. As soon as a poet had logged into the TP blog and posted a line, s/he emailed the next poet on the roster to pass on the baton. 

I love this image of the Tuesday Poet hard at work, it comes from our own Susan Landry in Maine: '... sitting in her bathrobe in Maine, hair sticking out in nine different directions, coffee cup rings marking her desktop...' There is something very familiar about this.

My co-curator Claire Beynon contributed the poem's second line from Ibiza, Spain, ten hours after Melissa Green posted, and Saradha Koirala from Wellington, New Zealand, came up with the third. And on it went.  We passed the baton around the world from Dunedin to London to Canberra to somewhere in Italy to Seattle to Auckland to Maine and many other places besides. And look what came out! A poem about song and celebration, light and company. 

There were remarkably few hiccups with the posting despite the time differences -- most notably the poem disappeared twice due to a pesky 'update' button and some mis-scheduling. But it came back again. Phew. We tidied up some lines and line breaks as we went along but the lines are mostly as posted. For example, 'it' appeared five times in three lines - some 'its' clearly had to 'hit' the dust, and early on we realised the growing poem was better in longer stanzas rather than the three-lines we started with.  

I was quoted on Beattie's book blog last week as saying: 'It's an exciting process watching the lines go up one by one - seeing the thinking behind each line: the language, the line-breaks, where it's left for the next poet to pick it up. It's like watching one poetic mind at work with each poet acting like one of the many competing voices that a poet hears as s/he writes: 'break the line there' 'no don't' 'rhyme it' 'don't you dare' 'how about plums to echo plume?' 'what are you thinking?' and so on.'



Tuesday Poem co-curator Claire Beynon and I are once more delighted to raise a glass to our remarkable bunch of poets and devoted blog readers who come together in this place once a week to enjoy and celebrate poetry. We are a community built on trust, generosity, flexibility and a mutual obsession -- and long may it last. 

Happy Birthday! Ra whanau ki a korua! 

Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon (curators)






Now please join our celebrating poets in the right hand sidebar to read poems written by them or ones they have chosen. 

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Birthday Poem (working title) continues

The shyest sparrow's supplications in the early evening trees
are a careful arpeggio - each note liberates a flotilla of leaves
fleeting, indeed, left scattered as archipelago in a dew-grass 
sea.  
The song's begun: feathered entreaties lift from every hedgerow, every
field, join in one great arc of beak and wing and downy plume --
brief benediction for the worker trudging home, a heart-lifted pause
at day's end. Summer's pages fall. Leaf by leaf, they shorten days,
strip bare the trunks, spill forth a concertina of split, sagging plums,
crimson globes -- Demeter's heart strung low against the blue note 
sky. Furrowed fields lie flat beneath the tramp of corn-fed feet.


The scene is set, two candles lit, another year opens a window 
through which we pass in streak of silver, burst of wheels' screech, breath
of horns' bright blasting. Inside, the chink of glass against china,
bubble of laughter tossed from one guest to the next draws us
to warmth, the blissful promise of shared experience. How it swells
the soul's bright plumage! A winking flame copies itself on the clean
slope of the knife before it passes. The reflection flickers: and beyond 
the window frame, a final guest hesitates in mauve-hued shadow, ghost 
of Keats maybe, listening still, reticent, reluctant to eschew autumn's 
arias or chorus.

Now, along the bay, the pulse of song ticks out again in joyous iteration, 
a boy kicks a ball against a wall, a sole finch adds bebop syncopation. Gabble, 
and its consistency of warm honey dampen the tenor, the tune -- best left out
in the tang of sharpened daylight. Shadows unwilling to retreat
stand shoulder-to-shoulder and beat the day's thrum chanting come, cold,
come, dark, come firelight, we too have our part. Gladly, watch effulgence fade,
into this gentler glow of murmured crackle and spark-fed thoughts. Each year
is gathered and falls away in a clap of digits, up from nothing to where
we find ourselves surrounded. It's come to this: the riffle of breath, the winking
flame. One is out, then the other. Stay with us, poet, it's time to start over.  


final update 11:20 am, Tuesday April 15 from Wellington - the final poem posted April 15


by Melissa Green, Claire Beynon, Saradha Koirala, Janis Freegard, T. Clear, Catherine Bateson, Renee Liang, Elizabeth Welsh, Alicia Ponder, Tim Jones, Kathleen Jones, Helen McKinlay, Helen Lowe, Eileen Moeller, Orchid Tierney, Susan T. Landry, Keith Westwater, Belinda Hollyer, Harvey Molloy, Bernadette Keating, Andrew M. Bell, Michelle Elvy, Catherine Fitchett, P.S. Cottier, Helen Rickerby, Mary McCallum.


Editor: Mary McCallum, TP co-curator


Tuesday Poem is two years old, and to celebrate we're writing another global poem. Twenty-six of our 31 poets living in six countries and 12 different cities will contribute a line each over 14 days to create it.


The global birthday poem kicks off at one minute past midnight on April 3, 2012 with a line from Boston poet Melissa Green - who also celebrates a birthday on April 3. Co-curator Claire Beynon (a New Zealander but currently in Ibiza, Spain) contributes the second line ten hours later, with Saradha Koirala from Wellington New Zealand posting at 6pm NZ time. The next day, it's Janice Freegard of Wellington in the morning and T Clear of Seattle in the evening, and on it goes until Tuesday April 17 when I post the final line and add a title.


The posts will be twice a day, usually around 8 am and 6 pm NZ Time, with some variations either side. Go to our global poem page to see who posts when and how, and remember to pop back to see how the poem unfolds and to cheer us on. Here's our first birthday poem, Tuesday.


Yes, Tuesday Poem is two years old. It began here on April 13 2010 after a casual start with a bunch of poets on my blog O Audacious Book , and has been posting every week since, bar a couple of weeks off over summer. Our Tuesday Poets take turns to be editor, and this involves selecting a poem, getting permission to run it, and writing up a response. It's that personal choice and response which, we believe, makes our posts so interesting and engaging for readers. Each of our poets also posts a Tuesday Poem each week on his or her own blog -- their own poems and poems they admire written by others. Look to the sidebar for those.


We have had so many wonderful poets and postings this year we can't begin to list the 'best of'. Fellow curator Claire Beynon and I bow deeply to the wonder of this - that a bunch of 30 poets (31 in fact) from six countries can work together to produce something so exciting, so profound, so community, so poetry and with so few hitches. Claire lives in Dunedin, I live in Wellington, and we've only met once ever, but we email, we talk by phone, and mostly TP progresses effortlessly giving poets and poems a platform and celebrating poetry in all its guises.


Our thanks to all our Tuesday Poets - including those who are on sabbatical or are in the alumni file - and to our guest editors, and all our followers and supporters. Reel through our posts - use the search in the sidebar - click on our Tuesday Poets sites - and see what it is we have here.


Nga mihi -
Happy Birthday -


Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon (curators)



Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Birthday Poem (working title 1)


The shyest sparrow's supplications in the early evening trees
are a careful arpeggio - each note liberates a flotilla of leaves
fleeting, indeed, left scattered as archipelago in a dew-grass sea  


this poem continues line by line from April 3 to April 17 2012 
see April 10 posting for the next update and April 17 for the final post

by Melissa Green, Claire Beynon, Saradha Koirala so far ... more to come

Editor: Mary McCallum, TP co-curator

Tuesday Poem is two years old, and to celebrate we're writing another global poem. Twenty-six of our 31 poets living in six countries and 12 different cities will contribute a line each over 14 days to create it.

The global birthday poem kicks off at one minute past midnight on April 3, 2012 with a line from Boston poet Melissa Green - who also celebrates a birthday on April 3. Co-curator Claire Beynon (a New Zealander but currently in Ibiza, Spain) contributes the second line ten hours later, with Saradha Koirala from Wellington New Zealand posting at 6pm NZ time. The next day, it's Janice Freegard of Wellington in the morning and T Clear of Seattle in the evening, and on it goes until Tuesday April 17 when I post the final line and add a title.

The posts will be twice a day, usually around 8 am and 6 pm NZ Time, with some variations either side. Go to our global poem page to see who posts when and how, and remember to pop back to see how the poem unfolds and to cheer us on. Here's our first birthday poem, Tuesday.

Yes, Tuesday Poem is two years old. It began here on April 13 2010 after a casual start with a bunch of poets on my blog O Audacious Book , and has been posting every week since, bar a couple of weeks off over summer. Our Tuesday Poets take turns to be editor, and this involves selecting a poem, getting permission to run it, and writing up a response. It's that personal choice and response which, we believe, makes our posts so interesting and engaging for readers. Each of our poets also posts a Tuesday Poem each week on his or her own blog -- their own poems and poems they admire written by others. Look to the sidebar for those.

We have had so many wonderful poets and postings this year we can't begin to list the 'best of'. Fellow curator Claire Beynon and I bow deeply to the wonder of this - that a bunch of 30 poets (31 in fact) from six countries can work together to produce something so exciting, so profound, so community, so poetry and with so few hitches. Claire lives in Dunedin, I live in Wellington, and we've only met once ever, but we email, we talk by phone, and mostly TP progresses effortlessly giving poets and poems a platform and celebrating poetry in all its guises.

Our thanks to all our Tuesday Poets - including those who are on sabbatical or are in the alumni file - and to our guest editors, and all our followers and supporters. Reel through our posts - use the search in the sidebar - click on our Tuesday Poets sites - and see what it is we have here.

Nga mihi -
Happy Birthday -

Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon (curators)