Nonsense poetry

[Eric]

There has been a great deal of what is termed "nonsense poetry" written. Little of it is looked at for more than a quick laugh. Should poems like "Jabberwocky" and similar be examined more closely, or is that spoiling the fun? Ditto, Edward Lear, Morgenstern, etc.

But the some people's fun can be obscure. What do you think that the joke behind this poem is (first published in Britain, probably, in the Penguin Book of Comic and Curious Verse in the 1960s):

A B C D Gol'fish
M N O Gol'fish
S D R Gol'fish
R D R Gol'fish

You can decipher the words easily, if you have a head for text messaging. But the meaning?

[Bottle Rocket]

I learned a different version:

A B C D Gol'fish
L M N O Gol'Fish
O S A R Gol'Fish


I'm not sure I'd call that nonsense poetry though; it's more like wordplay. In the US, there's another word-puzzle:

Where would a letter be delivered if it were addressed thusly:

Wood
John
Mass


By far the cleverest I know, however (which you, as a translator, should appreciate) is an exchange between Frederick the Great and Voltaire ... it calls for some tricky formatting; hope I can get it to look right.

Frederick to Voltaire:

P.........Si
--...a...--...?
1........100

Voltaire to Frederick:

Ja!

(solutions available upon request)


Finally, a wonderful example of free translation (which I discovered many years ago in a fascinating little book called The Astonishment of Words)

I'm sure this isn't word for word accurate to the original Alice in Wonderland quote, but close:

Alice: Every twenty-four hours the world turns upon its axis.

Red Queen: Speaking of axes, OFF WITH HER HEAD!!


which some inspired translator rendered into French as:

Alice: Chaque jour le monde fait une revolution.

Red Queen: Au sujet de revolution, a la guillotine!!


... and really finally, do you know the brilliant collective-noun joke about the four Oxford dons and the streetwalkers?


BRocket

[Igu Soni]

Explain all. All seems incredibly cryptic.

[Bottle Rocket]

Well, since no one else seems to share Eric's and my own interest in nonsense, nonce verse, word-puzzles, and puns, I'll make a final attempt at kick-starting the topic with that perennial, all-but-irresistible doggerel form, the limerick.

As just about everyone knows, almost all of the best limericks are filthy, the lewder the better, but unless someone in authority lets me off-leash, I'll cite only one such (actually a series of three), which is IMHO deliciously off-color rather than downright obscene.

I herewith provide a singleton, a pair, and a trio, of which the first is at least tangentially literary:

A practical fellow named Seth
Once shot up a hypo of meth
And while he was speeding
Caught up on his reading:
War and Peace, all of Proust, and MacBeth.



The next two are philosophical in nature:

Bishop Berkeley addressed himself: "God,
I find it exceedingly odd
How it is that this tree
Should continue to be
Though there's no one about in the Quad."

"Dear Bishop: It's not a bit odd
For I'm always about in the Quad;
Ergo, this tree
Will continue to be.
Signed, Yours respectfully, God"



Finally, my bluish threesome:

There were three young ladies of Birmingham,
And this is the scandal concerning 'em.
They lifted the frock
And tickled the c*ck
Of the Bishop engaged in confirming 'em.

Now, the Bishop was nobody's fool,
He'd been to a good public school,
So he took down their britches
And buggered those b!tches
With his ten-inch episcopal tool.

Then up spoke a lady from Kew,
And said, as the Bishop withdrew,
"Still, the vicar is quicker
And thicker and slicker,
And longer and stronger than you."


I'm sure many others have their own favorites too -- and if this last oversteps any bounds, I apologize and promise never to transgress again.

BRocket

PS: the double-dactyl is another wonderful form along the same lines.

[lenz]

It does overstep the bound of what's interesting.

[Bottle Rocket]

It does overstep the bound of what's interesting.

Honey swat key Mali pence


... but sorry anyway

BRocket


... actually, what I meant to say was "Shack unison goo"

[Eric]

Apart from Lewis Carroll, so ably translated into French, Edward Lear was also a producer of nonsense poetry, as was Christian Morgenstern, as Germans tell me.

Lenz obvious needs his sense of humour tickling by those three Brummie ladies (if they didn't come from Alabama). Not all nonsense verse is a load of cock.

Lear (Edward, not the mad king from Shakespeare) produced a number of memorable poems. Here's a website full of them:

Nonsense Books by Edward Lear, 1894

There is a definite oddity about some of Lear's works, and sometimes the oddity exceeds the humour. But in general many of his famous poems are worth a read.

[Bottle Rocket]

Forty-some years ago I had the distinctly odd experience of sitting on the front porch of a country house and listening to a second-generation child prodigy, aged 8, deliver an amazing explication de texte of The Jabberwocky, which was a genuine deconstruction-avant-Derrida although by now I've forgotten the finer points of his disquisition (actually, just about all of them, fine and fundamental alike). But at the time it was as persuasive as it was astonishing.

Alas, poor kid, like many another of his kind his awesome intellectual horsepower ended by driving him straight into a psychological tree, and last I heard of him he was homeless, sleeping rough in Lafayette Park in DC and earning his sparse meals playing chess against all comers at $5.00 a throw.

BRocket

[Bottle Rocket]

Another of my favorites in this line is Hilaire Belloc, especially in regard to the Battle of Omdurman during the Mahdist Uprising:

Thank God that we have got
The Maxim gun
And they have not


Interesting detail: when fact-checking this I have found at least three versions whose wording varies slightly, as well as several attributions not to Belloc but to Chesterton. (I'm Team Belloc, meself)

Ogden Nash is prolly the most famous such versifier in American letters, although Bud Trillin's perennial Christmas recap in The New Yorker is usually wittier than most of Nash, IMO.


BRocket

[Bottle Rocket]

This is far and away the cleverest "literary" joke I've ever run across (in English, anyway):


One bibulous evening in the '20s, not long before they were all sent down for one transgression or another, four young Oxonians were strolling through Christ Church Meadow lost in idle discussion of collective nouns: a pod of whales, a murder of crows, an exaltation of larks, etcetera etcetera and so forth.

As they left that bucolic Arcadia behind and reentered the streets of Oxford Town, they were approached and propositioned by a quartet of ladies of the night. Being of another persuasion altogether, the lads politely declined the offer and went on their way.

"A propos collectives," said the first, Sebastian, a charming youth for whom the world was his oyster, "I think I should describe those wenches as 'a bed of trollops'."

"Bravo," said the second, by birth Aloysius but known to all and sundry as Pooh-Bear, "Yet dare I say my whimsical taste runs more to 'a jam of tarts.'"

"Of course," said the third, blanching at the very idea of heterosex but determined to outdo his peers, "the correct terminology must needs be 'a flourish of strumpets.'"

"Oh bugger it, Anthony," said Charles, the last, a quietly observant sort of chap who had never in life come less than Double-First, "what else could they possibly be but An Anthology of English Pros??



BRocket



Oh how I wish I had originated this set piece rather than merely performing it.

[lionel]

I really don't want to create a 'Rugby Song' thread or whatever as I've always considered myself to be a feminist and it might attract undesirables if I did , but I can't find a natural place to paste this, and anyway it might be understood more by readers of this thread (although it's in French). (Hey anyway, where exactly are the French in this forum?) OK, it's about a woman masturbating with a carrot and a bit gets stuck inside her, and the moral is that feminists, instead of risking the potential dangers of experimentation, should stand by their mans's cockstand. However, I do distinctly remember a well moisturized carrot being eaten in a book I have somewhere, but this bowdlerized version will just have to do:

Branle Charlotte

Dans son boudoir la petite Charlotte
Chaude du con faute d'avoir un vit
Se masturbait avec une carotte
Et jouissait sur le bord de son lit.

Refrain :

Branle, branle, branle Charlotte
Branle, branle, ?a fait du bien
Branle, branle, branle Charlotte
Branle, branle, jusqu'? demain.

Ah! disait-elle dans le si?cle o? nous sommes
Il faut savoir se passer des gar?ons,
Moi pour ma part je me fous bien des hommes
Avec ardeur je me branle le con.

Refrain

Alors sa main n'?tant plus paresseuse
Allait venait comme un petit ressort
Et faisait jouir la petite vicieuse
Aussi ce jeu lui plaisait-il bien fort.

Refrain

Mais ? malheur, ? fatale disgr?ce
Dans son bonheur elle fit un brusque saut
Du contrecoup la carotte se casse
Et dans le con il en reste un morceau.

Refrain

Un m?decin praticien fort habile
Fut appel? qui lui fit bien du mal
Mais par malheur la carotte
Indocile ne put sortir du conduit vaginal.

Refrain

Mesdemoiselles que le sort de Charlotte
Puisse longtemps vous servir de le?on
Ah croyez moi laissez l? la carotte
Pr?f?rez lui le vit d'un beau gar?on

Refrain

Baise, Baise, Baise Charlotte
Baise, Baise, ?a fait du bien
Baise, Baise, Baise Charlotte
Baise, Baise, jusqu'? demain.

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