Category:
Poetry

Hoosier Poet Canned Goods

Very few--if any other--poets have a line of canned goods named after them, as did James Whitcomb Riley.





Posted By: Paul - Fri Jul 14, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Food, Poetry, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century

Midwatch In Verse

A new book explores the obscure poetic tradition of sailors in the U.S. Navy writing the first deck log of the new year in verse. As explained by the NW Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

For the average person, the deck logs of the U.S. Navy are what Dave Johnson would call mind-numbing and indecipherable.
The records, quasi-legal documents, were a requirement of each ship to note various bits of technical information -- ship speed and direction, even the number of propeller rotations and other things that would only be useful or make sense if you were in the Navy.
But one time of year, sailors were allowed to deviate from the benign record keeping and exhibit creativity with brief storytelling. During the first watch of the New Year, from midnight to 4 a.m., the Officer of the Deck could record in verse.

No one is sure when, or why this tradition began. The earliest known example (reproduced below) dates back to 1926, but the tradition was apparently already well established by then.

More info: midwatch-in-verse.com

I stand on the deck at midnight
As the clocks are striking the hour
And I’ll keep the watch until morning
To the best of my humble power.
We are anchored in Pedro harbor
Tho there isn’t much of a lee
And why they call it a harbor
Is something I never could see
But our hook is in hole A seven
And our center anchor chain
Has forty-five in the hawse pipe
And a very gentle strain.
When we anchored our trusty leadsman
Made a very careful cast
Finding eight and a half good fathoms
As the bugler blew the blast.
And down below in the fire rooms
Which the black gang ought to man
The steam is blowing bubbles
In number seven can.
All the battleship divisions
Swing nearby on the blue
Except the West Virginia
And the Mississippi too.
The Senior Officer Present
Floats peacefully in his sleep
On the good ship California
The guardian of the deep.
At one fifteen Roskelly
A pill rolling pharmacist’s mate
Returned from his leave on schedule
He’s lucky he wasn’t late.
That’s all the dope this morning
Except, just between us two
If the Captain ever sees this log
My gawd what will he do?

E.V. Dockweiler,
Ensign, U. S. Navy


Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 20, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Military, Books, Poetry

Jazz Poetry

The Wikipedia entry, followed by some examples from the Boston Post, 09 Jan 1921, Sun Page 53.




Posted By: Paul - Sat May 28, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Fads, Music, Poetry, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1920s

Dyr bul shchyl

The Russian artist Alexei Kruchenykh invented the Zaum language in 1913. He described it as "a language which does not have any definite meaning." From what I can gather, it was gibberish sounds strung together.

Dyr bul shchyl, also written by Kruchenykh, was the first (but not last) poem written in Zaum.

Dyr bul shchyl
ubeshshchur
skum
vy so bu
r l ez

You can hear Kruchenykh reading the poem aloud in the first clip. There's a more modern interpretation of it below.





Knowing Russian, or any other language, won't help you understand the poem. But according to Russian language expert Lucas Stratton, "critics have interpreted Dyr bul shchyl as an arrangement of sounds associated with a coming storm."

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 29, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Languages, Poetry, 1910s, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

The Poet Laureate of Dentistry

Note: after preparing this post, I realized that Paul had posted about the same thing two years ago. So consider this a repost.

Soylman Brown (1790-1876) was a Connecticut dentist who achieved prominence in his profession for a number of reasons. According to Wikipedia, he founded the first dental school, the first national dental society, and the first US dental journal. Plus, he became known as the Poet Laureate of Dentistry on account of his fifty-four page poem titled Dentologia - A Poem on Diseases of the Teeth, and Their Proper Remedies. It was published in 1840.



If you've got some time to kill, you can read the entire poem at the Internet Archive. Otherwise, I've sampled a brief part of it below, which should be enough to give you its general tone.

The first dentition asks our earliest care,
For oft, obstructed nature, laboring there,
Demands assistance of experienced art,
And seeks from science her appointed part.
Perhaps ere yet the infant tongue can tell
The seat of anguish that it knows too well,
Some struggling tooth, just bursting into day,
Obtuse and vigorous, urges on its way,
While inflammation, pain, and bitter cries,
And flooding tears, in sad succession rise.

The lancet, then, alone can give relief,
And mitigate the helpless sufferer's grief;
But no unpractised hand should guide the steel
Whose polished point must carry wo or weal:—
With nicest skill the dentist's hand can touch,
And neither wound too little nor too much.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 22, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Poetry, Nineteenth Century, Teeth

Henry Gibson Anti-Littering Ads

Anyone of a certain age recalls Henry Gibson and his "naive" poems on LAUGH-IN. Apparently, some ad agency thought he'd be perfect for their anti-littering campaign.





Source.

And they were even collected in a book, by the Glass Container Manufacturers Institute.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 25, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: PSA’s, Television, Poetry, 1960s

Dentologia:  A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth



Full text here.

Thanks to Richard Bleiler.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 13, 2018 - Comments (3)
Category: Hygiene, Poetry, Nineteenth Century, Diseases, Teeth

Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, and Jayne Mansfield

In 1964, Jayne Mansfield recorded an album for MGM that featured her reading selections from the poetry of Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Yeats, and others, as Tchaikovsky's music played in the background. Apparently she hoped the record would show off the asset she was most proud of, her 164 IQ.

The album isn't available on CD or MP3, but you can pick up a copy of the original vinyl on eBay for around $30 or $40.

More info: wikipedia





Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 21, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Celebrities, Poetry, 1960s

Staging a Left-olution

Today's post features a bunch of sinister, leftist radicals, in honor of International Left Handers Day (August 13).



Also, check out the Bill of Lefts.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 13, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Riots, Protests and Civil Disobedience, Video, Poetry

The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue

image

[Click to enlarge]

Original article here.

Once upon a time, poetry still mattered, and could cause great controversies. No social media for such battles, after all. This poem seems to have cost William Watson the post of UK Poet Laureate.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 13, 2015 - Comments (2)
Category: Poetry, 1900s, Women, Europe, Curses, Slurs, Insults, Vituperation, Libel and Slander

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Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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