The Versificator Takes Her Throne
My trusty editors and I are thrilled to announce that, following a grueling admissions process and a full round of innoculations, Bernanation has been accepted as the innaugural Jack Black's Body's Official Versificator. During her tenure as Versificator-in-Residence at JBB World HQ and in her position as the reigning Rhyming Laureate, Bernanation will be wowing you with her versification skills on an entirely irregular basis. Enjoy, folks!
Plagiarizing Joyce
Bernanation
On his wise shoulders
through the checkerwork of leaves
the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins,
current
currency of the noon sun
paying its way to get through the day.
And he knew
and he saw
the light on the asphalt
and the air laced with faraway fires and damp leaves
an equinox murder
an end of heat daze
and a slow-down wake-up in the debris of calendar leaves.
Shedding the seven year suit of solemn and sad somber silence
ending the aeon-long episode of eternal eyeless ease
needing the nocturnes in blue and green
digging digits into damp debris
making a patchwork garden in the collected carbon of burned calendar leaves,
easy trails of light, paralyzed in the heat.
Days of bearing weight on wise shoulders
and contemplating a king on a checkerboard of seasons
Yes, give him some moon-spun bangles
Sing him broken harmonies to get him through the day.
Plagiarizing Joyce
Bernanation
On his wise shoulders
through the checkerwork of leaves
the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins,
current
currency of the noon sun
paying its way to get through the day.
And he knew
and he saw
the light on the asphalt
and the air laced with faraway fires and damp leaves
an equinox murder
an end of heat daze
and a slow-down wake-up in the debris of calendar leaves.
Shedding the seven year suit of solemn and sad somber silence
ending the aeon-long episode of eternal eyeless ease
needing the nocturnes in blue and green
digging digits into damp debris
making a patchwork garden in the collected carbon of burned calendar leaves,
easy trails of light, paralyzed in the heat.
Days of bearing weight on wise shoulders
and contemplating a king on a checkerboard of seasons
Yes, give him some moon-spun bangles
Sing him broken harmonies to get him through the day.
Labels: Bernanation
posted by oline at 1:57:00 AM
1 Comments:
excuse me while I gush. This is damn fine stuff.
The conceit of the first stanza, the play between the gold of sunshine, the gold of coins, the current of time (represented by the sun) and the currency of money and how they merge together in line 7 to "pay their way through the day" is as rich and complicated as anything I've recently read.
Throughout I love the broken down composite feeling of the nouns, the checkerboards and patchworks, you really get the feeling that something is being broken down, perhaps against one's will, but that this is not a sad happenstance but something natural, something to revel in.
Sure something is being lost, the day is going by, the season is expiring, but something stifling and heavy is going away too.
Though I love the idea of opening the poem with the sun stanza and ending it with the moon, i think this move is a bit too easy (especially in a poem as solid as this one) and in particular the phrases "sun flung spangles" and "moon spun bangles" just don't have enough distance between them to really make them reverberate. Their close proximity allows me to think if only for a moment that this poem has admitted a contrivance or two and that doesn't make me very happy. With a couple more stanzas i think the reader would have to work a bit more to recall where they had come from, the day between them would be more full, the faraway fires smell all the more poignantly.
i don't want to end on a harsh note for an otherwise exceptional piece so I'll add the the opening and closing lines are quite simply brilliant. "On his wise shoulders" literally carries all of the poem's pleasant unexpected turns on its strong back, and "Sing him broken harmonies to get him through the day" suggests a certain light melancholy that doesn't paralyze, but inspires and encourages me to go back once more and sift through the pieces of the whole to make sure there was nothing i missed an a very full day/season/life's travels.
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