The Written Peace:
Open Forum of August 11, 2006
I am now thoroughly convinced that this place is the intellectual, cyberspace equivalent of the bar in the old television series Cheers.
Moving along, I want to welcome some good people. Dad the Realist has shown up on occasion, and his input is thoroughly worthy of this place, as is the recent commentary by Dianna of Swatch It, Imoral Majority of the blog Immoral Majority, and Don. I honestly cannot remember whether or not I had ever before formally welcomed Mark of the blog called GASH, but I shall risk redundancy by doing so here, as I shall for Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword. And always, I thank those who have been here since forever, both the active commenters and those who quietly pass through on a regular basis.
A few minor matters are on the agenda. First, I have added some new computer desktop wallpapers to the selection offered in the sidebar section, Dark Wraith Themes. All of the wallpapers are from posts here at The Dark Wraith Forums, although you'll be seeing them at full color and size, especially if you choose a 1600×1200 version. In several cases, the graphics are slightly different from what you would have seen posted in an article or as a link from an article: post-publication enhancements—final touches and subtle additions, mainly—are not particularly obvious except maybe in the graphic "Dark Century." Eventually, those graphics and several others will be offered as posters, but that's down the road a little ways.
Within the next few days, a Special Blog Post might be published here to make an announcement of relatively minor importance for the time being, but perhaps of somewhat greater importance later on.
Finally, as far as exciting and boring blog notices are concerned, the advertisements that have become rather fossilized mainstays down in the sidebar will begin to vanish over the next couple of weeks. Although I had been planning to do that, a number of the advertisers have been kind enough to get me motivated to drop them sooner than I had planned. Up until recently the overriding issue that had been bothering me was that the advertisers get free company and product exposure here for nothing more than offering me the faint hope of commissions. Now, it's gotten serious: most of the advertisers are forcing their "affiliates" to go to javascript snippets rather than linked graphics. Aside from the fact that javascripts on a site slow down the load time—and I do enough javascripts of my own here to slow the load time down to a glacial crawl, thank you very much—the major problem is that I lose control not just of content the advertisers want to push through, but I also lose control of exactly what those advertisers are doing to site visitors and those who click through on the ads. Up until now, I could simply cut out things like "Web bugs" and other controversial code from the ads I posted; but with javascripts that are being called from the advertisers' servers, I can't do that. That means retaining or dropping many of the advertisers has moved from a simple business decision to a risk management exercise. Risk managers make really good salaries; so, since the advertisers refuse to pay attractive flat fees, I must turn the matter back into a simple business decision, and the decision on that basis is quite easy to make.
All is not lost, though. In a couple of weeks, I shall offer ad space for classified advertisements, here. That's right: you can sell stuff right here at The Dark Wraith Forums. Tasteful stuff, mind you. I shall not countenance any ads for people selling their organs or the entire bodies, for example. Neither will I suffer ads for "services" of an altogether tawdry, prurient, or otherwise unappetizing type. Sheesh: I shouldn't have to even point that out; but somehow, I know I'll regret it if I don't.
Enough of that.
Earlier today, I slipped back over to one of my ancient haunts, the Medieval History Forum at About.com, so I could find the massive thread—now long dead—I created there. It was called "A Once and Future Language," and it was a behemoth, the longest one ever sustained in that forum if I'm not mistaken. I was looking for a particular post I published, but going through all 600+ comments of my thread left me empty-handed. Then I realized that I must have put the post in question on another thread there. As I started expanding my search, I realized that I had published comments on probably several dozen threads in the forum. I finally found the post, and I thought I'd share it with you. The background of it has to do with a running discussion that was going on about an ancient poem/song called "Green Grow the Rushes—O," upon which I commented at length and in great detail. However, in the interest of offering spice to what some might have considered a rather boring track the discussion was taking, I decided to offer some versions of a poem by the same name written by Robert Burns in the 18th Century. What makes the Burns poem fascinating is that there are two versions, one most definitely by Burns and the other quite possibly by him. Below, I republish the post in its entirety, which I was addressing to the forum member who called herself Lady Hawke.
Good evening, Lady Hawke.
Well, I suppose I opened the door by mentioning something naughty and almost on-topic that I might post. The subject of this thread is a song entitled Green Grow the Rushes—O, which is almost the same as a poem/song attributed to the 18th Century poet, Robert Burns. His poem is entitled Green Grow the Rashes—O or Green Grow the Rushes—O, but it is considerably different from the subject of this thread. What makes this poem interesting (and perhaps a little closer to being on topic) is that two very different versions of this poem exist: the published version and an earlier, draft version represented by a friend of Burns as a draft that Burns sent him. The draft version quickly passed into folk tradition, and variations on it have been made and sung ever since, although this version cannot be directly attributed to Burns other than on the word of this supposed friend.
Before we proceed, I must warn you all that the draft version is just about as obscene as literature can get in any era. If pornographic trash is offensive to you, you might want to skip the second version. Even if you do read it, you might want to consider bathing afterward.
I shall post these two versions; then I shall return in a while with some scholarly commentary on the vulgarity of it all. I figure that this chain of posts will not only kill this thread, it might even cause it to burst into red flames and disappear into oblivion.
Without further ado, we first have the published, nice version.
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
There's nought but care on ev'ry han',
In ev'ry hour that passes, O:
What signifies the life o' man,
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
The warly race may riches chase,
An' riches still may fly them, O;
An' tho' at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
But gie me a canny hour at e'en,
My arms about my Dearie, O;
An' warly cares, an' warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
For you sae douse, ye sneer at this,
Ye're nought but senseless asses, O:
The wisest Man the warl' saw,
He dearly lov'd the lasses, O.
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
Auld Nature swears, the lovely Dears
Her nob!est work she classes, O:
Her prentice han' she try'd on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
Nice, isn't it? Now, let us have a look at the draft version. (Note that this is your last warning that you might want to turn back.)
O wat ye ought o' fisher Meg,
And how she trow'd the webster, O,
She loot me see her carrot cunt,
And sell'd it for a labster, O.
Green graw the rashes, O,
Green grow the rashes, O,
The lassies they hae wimble-bores,
The widows they hae gashes, O.
Mistress Mary cow'd her thing,
Because she wad be gentle, O,
And span the fleece upon a rock,
To waft a Highland mantle, O.
Green graw the rashes, O,
Green grow the rashes, O,
The lassies they hae wimble-bores,
The widows they hae gashes, O.
An' heard ye o' the coat o' arms
The Lyon brought our lady, O,
The crest was; couchant; sable cunt.
The motto - "ready, ready," O.
Green graw the rashes, O,
Green grow the rashes, O,
The lassies they hae wimble-bores,
The widows they hae gashes, O.
An' ken ye Leezie Lundie, O.
The godly Leezie Lundie, O,
She mounts like reek thro' a' the week,
But finger fucks on Sunday, O.
Green graw the rashes, O,
Green grow the rashes, O,
The lassies they hae wimble-bores,
The widows they hae gashes, O.
That got something of a rouse out of the crowd. For me, the poetry of that by-gone era illustrates just how far our society—nay, our very civilization—has declined from that glad time of the 18th Century when we were far more godly and when our the inspirational leaders of society were veritable beacons of piety of heart and purity of thought.
The Dark Wraith sheds a tear for the innocence we have lost in these modern times.
Speak your peace. Anything and everything is topical in an open forum here. We'll open some bags of chips to eat during the poetry reading that begins later. I ask that no one throw chips at the poets, though: for one thing, poets don't like chips being thrown at them; and for another thing, since they were on sale, I got the kind called "kettle chips," which are really crunchy. They make a mess on the floor, and when people step on them, pieces tend to fly like shrapnel. I'll make some espresso later, too, just in case the poetry starts getting on the slow side.
The Dark Wraith turns down the house lights and brings out some candles to enhance the literary mood.
Published 8/10/2006 11:57:00 PM
<< 18 Comments Total
Good Morning,
Once again, I really should be in bed, rather than posting and hanging out on a rather atmospheric but empty forum. Hallloooo....am I the only one without a life?
But really, I would love to hear the take from the folks here about the red alert-our first, even if it is limited to airlines-even though it is doubtful I'll be on=line again until Monday or Tuesday. I must be off to Ohio for a wedding among the outlaws, and it will be interesting to say the least.
Also DW, did you ever see my post at the BBS about www.redmeat.com/? You would enjoy the humor...assuming of course that you are not secretly the author.
I hear thunder, so I must be off now. Enjoy the weekend everyone.
Good evening (or morning), Wild Clover.
Who says you're alone in here? I suppose it is a bit creepy, given that I'm lurking in the shadows just waiting to jump out and scare the willies out of the hapless commenter thinking the room is empty.
Yes, I do need to respond over at the BBS to the redmeat.com info you posted. I wasn't over there yesterday. I sort of got toasted from a beginning-of-the-academic-year department meeting I hadn't planned to attend. It was ugly, Wild Clover. They set a trap with fresh doughnuts. I knew it was a trap, but I thought I knew how to grab the doughnuts without springing the trap.
I was wrong. Little did I know that the room the doughnuts were in wasn't the actual meeting room. I grabbed the doughnuts and then made my escape through a side door that led down a hallway to another room that led to the quad. Unfortunately, the meeting was being held in that stupid second room. I walked right in and just stood there with a cake doughnut in my mouth as everyone looked at me.
My only hope was that the cake doughnut protruding from my teeth was large enough that no one would recognize me. Sadly, it wasn't three seconds before the overly-friendly vice chairman bawled out something about how I'd "finally" made it, and how I needed to grab a copy of the agenda over by the juice bar.
The "agenda" looked more like some multi-volume encyclopædia.
Lord.
Okay, I'm still alive, so I should't complain. And I most decidely will have a something to say about this latest foiled terrorist plot just as soon as I can get through the breathless media hyping of the government's propaganda. It just drives me batty that this government and the one in Britain have made it so difficult for me to believe anything the media parrots from their PR machines.
As nice as it would be to just buy the official story line, I keep thinking in the back of my head that we're talking about a plot foiled by the British and the Pakistanis. First, we're talking about the very same British whose thugs shot a "terrorist" full of bullets only to have to admit later that the guy was completely innocent. Second, we're talking about the very same Pakistanis who keep helping us by catching the "top-ranking" officials of al-Qa'ida (and do so when Bush needs a boost in his credibility), except that it always seems to turn out that, instead of catching the big fish running the terrorist networks, what the Pakistanis capture are the Pakistani equivalent of pimple-faced computer geeks whose sole connection to terrorism is that they host databasing and SMTP servers the bad guys use for a while.
I'm not impressed by Bush, nor by Blair, nor by Musharraf: all three of them are much more interested in saving their own political skins than in dealing with the wide-ranging issues underlying this terrorist cell or that terrorist plot. Incompetence rarely scores a true win; usually, it manages to spin a total fiasco into a silk purse.
But always, always, at the end of the day, that silk purse is nothing but a sow's ear with a pretty clasp sewn on it.
That's my initial reaction until I find more reasons to be negative.
The Dark Wraith should probably be more objective... but won't be until someone outlaws department meetings run by people who lie when they say, "I'd like to hear people's input," during their long-winded speeches.
Good Morning Dark Wraith: I spent most of yesterday resolving travel issues. I had been scheduled for six flights in the next eight days and I decided that I didn't want to do any of them. Not because I'm afraid of terrorists. To quote John Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey "They can suck my insouciance." I decided with my low tolerance for the idiots walking among us the airport was not the place for me. The thing that truly hit home hard for me is that when our administration trots out its spokepersons to bleat into the microphones my first reaction is one of disbelief. I know they're lying and what they are saying is, at best, a partial truth told with the intention of conveying a falsehood; all the while, knowing that they have no problem at all with bald faced shameless outhouse prevarification. I not only disbelieve the things that they say, I have almost zero confidence in any course of action/reaction they might choose to take. So far, most of their remedies have been far worse than the disease. They have the same professional track records as Garfield's doctors.
The sight of the U.S., Israel, France, Lebanon, Hizbullah posturing and scheming around their ideas for "peace" while children and the elderly are huddled in shelters and my lovely memories of Beruit are being bombed into oblivion yet again is distressing and depressing. The main players in this arena are a strong enough mixture of stupid, reactive, arrogant and delusional that region wide conflict might be a best case scenario.
Good Morning Again All:
On the subject of published vs. performance piece I can well imagine a poet like Burns, who had a stellar reputation for live recitations of his own work, used the published versions as a framework rather than a static document. I have spent many nights in places after the show with the composers and performers of very well known (and expected, nay demanded) popular songs. Because we simply must do these songs that we have performed countless times over the last twenty years, for us, they are rather stale and lifeless. I have wonderfully, viciously obscene versions for many of your favorites songs. I've been known to do them just as a "fuck you" to the audience that gets surly with me. Sometimes, it's a spur of the moment thing to keep the song moving past a blank spot. On "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" one night to fill a blank spot I sang "Now I like this song 'cause it's so fucking long and none of you know all the words"
Erotic and downright dirty poetry and songs have been with us for a long, long time. As long as the poet's main charge is the evocation of feeling they will gravitate naturally to the strong feelings produced by love and sex. Bless them for that.
Good afternoon, Minstrel Boy.
I was wondering if you saw this photo. That shot was taken this morning at the Israeli border with Lebanon, and it was of just one of all kinds of those nice little get-togethers massing as the sun came up over there.
Between you and me, I don't think Israel is about to sign on to a ceasefire.
Call it wild hunch.
The Dark Wraith suspects those tanks aren't there for a Baptist Revival.
McMa’am (who quietly passes through on a regular basis and merely gets a “Confound it, woman.” LOL!) says:
Oh my! That poetry is a bit on the lusty side, eh, McSwain? Aye, there’s nothing wrong with a little lust, laddie. And it’s much less disturbing than war or politics.
For me, the poetry of that by-gone era illustrates just how far our society—nay, our very civilization—has declined from that glad time of the 18th Century when we were far more godly and when our the inspirational leaders of society were veritable beacons of piety of heart and purity of thought.
The Dark Wraith sheds a tear for the innocence we have lost in these modern times.
*Wiping wine off the monitor* :-)
I suppose it is a bit creepy, given that I'm lurking in the shadows just waiting to jump out and scare the willies out of the hapless commenter thinking the room is empty.
And I still ain’t askeered of ya! :-D
Moving on to other appetites:
Here is a poem appropriate for reading to an audience after Rabbie Burns’ Address to the Haggis, shortly after they have eaten the haggis. (You will need an audience with a sense of humor!) The author is unknown.
TAE A FERT
Oh, what a sleekit horrible beastie
Lurks in yer belly efter the feastie
Just as ye sit doon among yer kin
There sterts to stir an enormous wind.
The neeps and tatties and mushy peas
Stert workin’ like a gentle breeze
But soon the puddin’ wi the sauncie face
Will have ye blawin’ all ower the place.
Nae matter whit the hell ye dae
A’ bodys gonnae have tae pay
Even if ye try to stifle,
It’s like a bullet oot a rifle.
Hawd yer bum tight tae the chair
Tae try and stop the leakin’ air
Shift yersel frae cheek tae cheek
Prae tae God it does nae reek.
But aw, yer efforts go asunder
Oot it comes like a clap a thunder
Ricochets aroon the room
Michty me, a sonic boom!
God almighty it fairly reeks;
Hope I huv nae shit ma breeks
Tae the bog I better scurry
Aw whit the hell, its no ma worry.
A’ body roon aboot me chokin‘,
Wan or two are nearly bokin’
I’ll feel better for a while
Cannae help but raise a smile.
“Wis him!” I shout with accusin’ glower,
Alas too late, he’s just keeled ower
“Ye dirty bugger,” they shout and stare
I dinnae feel welcome any mair.
Where ere ye go let yer wind gan free
Sounds like just the job fur me
Whit a fuss at Rabbie's perty
Ower the sake o won wee ferty.
Good evening, Moody Blue.
My, but that was a refreshing poem you posted. I do dearly love poetry, and those bawdy poems just add such a wonderful window on what is sometimes referred to as "low" culture, which isn't so much "low" as it is "unaccepted" despite its prevalence.
Poetry and good prose is too often underrated in its power. When I was an English teacher, I would sometimes use entire class periods to read poetry, especially poetry of much earlier times, when the English language was spoken quite differently from the way it is spoken most places today. (That naughty Burns poem is an absolute delight to recite aloud, by the way.)
When I was teaching at the two-year college in one of the "bad" parts of a Midwestern city, I had to deal with young people who had no patience at all (at least, at first) for instruction in English grammar, composition, and literature. I remember the first time I decided to read a passage from Shakespeare to them. I wanted them to hear how it would have sounded in the London dialect of Shakespeare's own time, and I was especially interested in having them hear the "unofficial" version of Shakespearean English, as opposed to the form presented in the official folio that was published and polished long after the Bard's death. The "unofficial," so-called "First Folio" works have considerably "rougher" English, but it is also more modern than what was published much later.
Anyway, the students were a bit boisterous the one day when class started, although they always tried to be on good behavior. I told them that I was going to read them some Shakespeare, and I could tell they were less than thrilled with the prospect.
I thought quickly about doing something other than the passage I had originally planned, and I settled on the soliloquy from Macbeth V. v. that begins, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow..." I had them read along in their Shakespeare readers so they could see the spellings of the words as they heard the pronunciations. (This, by the way, was a last folio edition, so the language was more polished than I would have preferred, but was okay.)
I'll never forget how transformative doing that was, not just for them, but for me, as well. Moody Blue, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. By half-way through that short passage, most of them weren't even looking at their books anymore: they were just sitting there, looking almost blankly at me, listening.
I finished, and there was just quiet for a few seconds; then one of the young women asked if I could read something from Romeo and Juliet "that same way," which I gladly did.
We had a marvelous conversation afterward, one important theme of which was that English is not static, nor is it fixed in stone as some unchanging, unchangeable "book" of rules. Someone in the class noted that this meant her way of talking wasn't "wrong" or "improper" in some absolute sense. I told her that she was exactly right; and this gave me the perfect opportunity to explain the concepts in rhetoric of "forum" and "decorum": what you say, how you say it, and where you say it changes, not just within your own life, but also across generations. I later took the opportunity to show them several writings by Chaucer: he could write the most pious, Christian of literature one day and then write utterly obscene poetry a short time later.
The students at that school were learning how to be paralegals or court reporters. It was in those English classes that they leared that "high" language is to be neither worshipped nor derided; it is merely one dialect appropriate to a particular forum, and it is in fact entirely inappropriate in other places in one's life.
As I said, that first class where I pressed into service my knowledge of earlier forms of written and spoken English was transformative for me. It was then that I learned how to be a really effective teacher of English by using the history of the language as the fundamental platform for teaching the modern form I wanted students to learn and use when appropriate.
God! but I miss teaching English. Unfortunately, I never will again.
Hence, Moody Blue, you must occasionally suffer my mental wanderings into a good place in my past as a teacher.
The Dark Wraith looks back fondly.
Minstrel Boy essentially made my point. Whatever Burns may have published for the 'church' crowd - he certainly offered up broader rhymes whilst performing at a country faire! Someone who'd just finished selling those pigs he'd been planning on for a hefty price wasn't interested in polite la-di-da with his beer. He wanted a touch of pornography - something to take home to the missus, as it were. If Burns wanted to pocket a few of that farmer's hard earned coins - he had to entertain; and you must admit - that second version is damn entertaining!
Oh my Dark One. I will post your graphic at once. I was waiting for the right time but today is the right time.
So cool to read the words of Robert Burns!!! thank you. A red-haired Scottish professor of mine many years ago said that there was a hidden meaning to Auld Lang Syne, I was wondering if you ever considered what it might be (I have!) and if you noticed his reference to the lowly weed in some poems, my favorite being:
"Come, firm resolve, take thou the van
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man!
And let us mind, faint heart ne'er wan a lady fair
Wha does the utmost that he can
Will whyles do mair."
Ah, Wraith!
I really must thank you for this! I'd heard that Burns composed much in the way of ribald poetry but I'd never had the pleasure of reading any until you published this. A good friend once recommended a collection of Burns' less savory work to me and I didn't get around to picking it up. That was an oversight that needs to be corrected!
It's interesting to see the two songs side by side, since together they form a good representation of the two sides of the Scottish character. Which on the one hand can be bookish, pious, reserved and at times dour. And on the other, earthy, bellicose, barbaric and vulgar. I'm not certain that either list of attributes is perfectly desirable, but hell, that's just us!
Good evening, Mr. Shakes.
I was rather wondering if you would be stopping by to see the Burns poetry.
Your comment about the dual nature of some people resonates with me. For many years, I have found myself modulating perilously between a very dignified, technical way of writing and a far more—shall we say—ribald way of expressing myself. Such is the complexity of the life well lived: to speak both in the comfort of presentable formality and the license of unfettered expression; but as long as we may write, let us write as we may, as I said in a poem that ended a play I wrote a few year back:
Time of passing, days yet to come;
Echo the voice! Vast be the drum.
Hist’ry spoken, clutch safe the sound:
Future treasures, the lost ev’r found.
Flourish of truth, peppered with lies;
Godspeed the scribe, the slain should rise.
A word breathed once opens a door.
Mansion of thought hungers for more.
Speak with thy tongue, write with thy quill;
Future and past: no place is still.
Chasm so dark, call out in faith:
“Witness beauty!” so says the Wraith.
Good evening, kablooie.
The sad part is that some poems I would at one time have read without a second thought in class I would now not touch with a ten-foot pole. By the time I had stopped teaching English, the complaints about bawdy, ribald, or otherwise impolitic poems were just too much to take. My last reading of the second Burns poem in an English class at a community college nearly got me hanged on a sexual harrassment complaint (filed by no fewer than three students). I think that reading a poem about hemp would expose me to the risk of a complaint about promoting drug use, since I was once burned on similar charges for having students read some "beat" literature.
From my perspective, it's all a game of "Gotcha," and to some extent, most administrators see it as such; but it's a good way to put a teacher on the defensive who isn't liked by some administrator.
Sad, too. I used to love to read "The Miller's Tale" from the Canterbury Tales, but these days I'd be nuts to do the part where he kisses a woman in the dark and is thereby befuddled by the fact that she has a "beard."
I get in enough trouble once in a while these days for having my economics students read "The Manifesto of the Communist Party." Fortunately, Marx is so obtusely strident that even my Right-wing students don't exactly get many of his salient points until I explain them in class, and by then the students are so flogged from having tried to plow through it themselves that they're willing to let the whole issue drop. Nevertheless, I do get a complaint registered with the chairman every now and then. The last one didn't give any mention at all that I had spent far more time running through writings from the Right, including Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and (my favorite) Ludwig Von Mises (my favorite because of his open declaration that the advances in civilization of the past few centuries were because of the 'White races').
Oh, well. It's still fun to be a teacher. Even the occasional stale doughnuts in the faculty lounge are a welcome benefit.
The Dark Wraith needs to lay off the doughnuts, though, lest he become a bigger man because of his chosen profession.
Good evening, Fat Lady Sings.
It's funny you should mention the relationship between what one earns and what one offers for sale.
I have learned to my pain over the years that the most consistent source of earnings on the Internet is pornography. Because I will not provide such advertisements or deliver that kind of content, I earn accordingly.
On the other hand, one of the projects on which I'm working is a novel with a few fairly steamy passages in it. I'll be curious—should I finish the project without my word processor bursting into flames—to see if it's a winner. I do plan to offer a sample of it here at The Dark Wraith Forums some time in the next month, but I'm still not sure about how much I should offer.
Anyway, that's about as far as I would go. Burns obviously had the formula down pat: piety for the lasting legacy; ribaldry for the pocket change.
Still and all, that poem was rather on the obscene side, wasn't it?
The Dark Wraith was afraid some folks might be offended by its republication here.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Thanks for sharing the poem. I liked the way you combined the alliterative half line with iambic rhyme. It was nice to see your love of the medieval and the Elizabethan shining through. Appropriate, in a comment about dual forms of expression.
Speaking different tongues does have its disadvantages, though. I do get some odd looks when words and phrases more at home in the mouth of an old Etonian come tumbling out of my working class gob. Kind of makes it hard to really fit in anywhere. I wouldn't have it any other way, though.
Honey - I paid part of my way through college writing erotica. The pay was decent, I could use outrageous pseudonyms and I had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. Now - the novel I have completed (and hopefully will find an agent for) fairly rocks with those kinds of 'ribald' passages. I must say, however - I have been considering saying to hell with it, and going back to my (if you will excuse the expression) 'old profession'. Sex sells; or so they say. A certain 'romance' writer named Jaid Black has made a fortune selling her peculiar ( and boy howdy do I mean peculiar!) brand of sex; so I guess that saying is right on the money (oh I'm full of them tonight!). So go ahead and put up a sample of your novel. I’ve excerpted sections of mine on my blog (excluding certain passages, however). It would be fun to see how a male writer handles the subject. Every erotica writer I’ve ever known has been female.
Good afternoon Dark One,
Poetry can be a beautiful thing when written by inspired and talented individuals.
Alas, my writing skills are limited to an occasional bawdy limerick, or an historical essay for college.
I'm not sure if blogging counts, but if I come up with a good limerick along the way, I'll share it.
I began to post early this morning, but the damn cat walked over the power button on the ups and killed my 'puter. I try again.... First, gas prices make no sense. Barrel prices went up $2 and we shot up 10 cents. Went down about 60 cents, and our price went down a nickel. Meanwhile, out here in the county, which tends to be a few cents higher, the price dropped yesterday by 20 cents. Yeah, the government can't really do much to lower gas prices directly, but sheesh, I'm about to wish they'd do some control on how often prices can be raised and lowered at the pump, as well as some indexing as to how big or small a jump is allowed(I have no idea how this would work in practicality, but this makes budgeting impossible).
My second announcement is that at great risk to life and limb, and the offices of a nice man, we rescued one of our wandering goats, who unfortunately has a broken back and is pretty crippled. The rescue involved riding the railroad access road, thru a tunnel, under a fence, up a steep slope, and into a low cave. Our hero of the day slid down the slope with a 70-80 pound goat on his lap. He gets lots of points in heaven.