(I'm going to continue not taking poetry too seriously. Everything should be laughed at sometime.)

Just as Andres Cantor is The Voice of futból to the Spanish-speaking world, Phil Liggett is The Voice of cycling to the English speaking world. If you ever watch a major race on OLN, odds are it wil be called by Phil Liggett (and his partner, Paul-somebody, but who cares about him?).

It's not his accent or his almost-encyclopeadic knowledge of cycling that makes him The Voice, nor is it his interaction with Paul while announcing a race. It's the words he chooses and the cadence at which he speaks, along with the emotion he brings to his commentating. It almost sounds like...well, like poetry.

Probably because it is. Good poetry conveys emotion as well as meaning, and there is emotion in his voice and in his word choice that can relate more to you than just mere words do. And by laying those words out in a form common to poetry, you have Found Poetry.

Sometime last year, Doug Donaldson collected a boatload of Liggett quotes, broke them up from prose into stanzas, broke the stanzas further with some e.e. cummings-like layouts, and collected them into a book entitled Dancing on the Pedals: The Found Poetry of Phil Liggett, The Voice of Cycling. Yeah, found poetry that's a bitch of a lot of fun to read.

(Please note the multiple periods in two of the following poems are not part of the poems as published. They're necessary to simulate the formatting of the poem. Yeah, my HTML skillz are wanting.)

............. Come to Paris
....................... The
....................... Eiffel
...................... Tower
................... didn't throw
..................... a shadow
............. over this .... race for
.......... the man .......... in Yellow
Stage 23, 1986

I love the way the layout of the words bring to mind an image of the Eiffell Tower. Lewis Carroll used a similar format in The Mouse's Tale, setting the words so that they form a picture of the subject. Beautiful.

Room Service
The Yellow Jersey will go to his hotel,
tonight,
his room.
Stage 10, 2000

In three simple lines, using eleven lonely words, Mr. Liggett captures the solitude the leader of the race must feel. It is, indeed, lonely at the top.

Finally, Mr. Liggett gives us his version of a tragic epic poem:

Eck Aced I
No attacks of note all day
And now we're onto the Champs-Elysées and
The attacks have started.
Viatcheslav Ekimov, former world champion of the amateurs
.... and now, of course, the defending world champion
.... very shortly
.... if he rides in the world championship of the pursuit
.... over five thousand meters.
Let's just see how fast he is here.
This is a tremendous race for the line.
The field are boring down on him
he's got a real good chance though.
He winds it up.
.... He won a stage like this last year
.... when he went in the last couple of kilometers.
He keeps looking over his shoulder
that's an elementary mistake
.... when you're out in front
.... you don't look where the rest are
.... because there isn't much you can do about them.
You just go as fast as you can.
Across the Place de Concorde here, now, over the cobble-
stones
he'll flick right very shortly then he'll see the finish here
and he looks good;
he looks really good
Ekimov could be picking off one of the most coveted stages
in any Tour de France
.... to win on the Champs-Elysées.
Stage 21, 1992
Ekimov will lose to teammate
Olaf Ludwig

Oh, the tragedy! Ekimov struggles mightily, but it's all for naught: Not until the poem is over do we learn Ekimov did not win the stage!

UPDATE: annika has posted Found Poetry in the past! I still prefer Phil Liggett's.

Posted by: Victor at 09:32 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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(NOTE: This will not be as detailed as I hoped it would be, because lately, as I'm sure regular readers have noticed, mu.nu has been up and down like the bloody Assyrian Empire.)

Nonsense poems are poems as graffiti. While a good one is beautiful, a lot of them are pretty bad and an eysore. A good nonsense poem is fun to read--no serious interpretation is necessary. There are no hidden meanings, no great truths hidden in a true nonsense poem, as a nonsense poem is an exercise in sound and meter.

And because of this, I suspect writing a good nonsense poem would be extremely difficult for an experienced poet. Now, don't get me wrong--the sound and the meter is the easy part. The difficult part is making it read like real poetry, and not just a mish-mash of...well, sounds in a certain beat.

The best and most beautiful of all nonsense poems is, without a doubt, Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky and there's not much to be said by way of introduction:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Jabberwocky flows like a gentle stream, using nonsense words that seem and sound like real words (in fact, some of them may be adaptions of obsolete English words, and others have made it into the vernacular). At the same time, there is a story in there...somewhere. Alice herself has the best comment on this poem: "It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!...Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!" As well a good nonsense poem should.

By contrast, Ogden Nash (whose poetry was mostly humorous in nature) tried his hand at nonsense and it comes off like a gawd-awful ripoff of Jabberwocky:

Geddondillo

The sharrot scudders nights in the quastron now,
The dorlim slinks undeceded in the grost,
Appetency lights the corb of the guzzard now,
The ancient beveldric is otley lost.

Treduty flees like a darbit along the drace now,
Collody lollops belutedly over the slawn.
The bloodbound bitterlitch bays the ostrous moon now,
For yesterday's bayable majicity is flunky gone.

Make way, make way, the preluge is scarly nonce now,
Make way, I say, the gronderous Demiburge comes,
His blidless veins shall ye joicily rejugulate now,
And gollify him from 'twixt his protecherous gums.

I'm sorry, but this is unreadable. I'm cringing by the fourth word, moaning by the third line, and somewhere in the second stanza my eyes explode and I run away screaming and tearing my hair out. While the meter seems derived from Jabberwocky the beat is off just enough to make me want to scream. The nonsense words are truly nonsense and forced, and they sound too harsh to make this poem even vaguely fun to read. At three stanzas and twelve lines this is waaay too long. There's absolutely no hint of a story in there. It's not very pretty, it's impossible to understand, and my head is not filled with ideas. Man oh Manischewitz, this poem sucks.

Posted by: Victor at 07:48 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 Good stuff about total nonsense! ;-D While I've done plenty of poetry I've yet to tackle the Nonsense Poem. What's the Meter anywho?

Posted by: liriK ffeizarudnuK at July 19, 2006 01:01 PM (kmErY)

2 Excellent postroillig por Victor to shlump. Hasn't been this ferglippy in nigh on a gwump. If I had my droffings I'd flumpher their voop, like a squitch on dugginz, or annika's throop.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 19, 2006 04:41 PM (Ipin8)

3 Hmmph! Show off! ;-D Funny, though, Tuning. ;-D

Posted by: Kiril, The Mad Macedonian at July 19, 2006 05:22 PM (IF0uE)

4 I like to think of myself as open minded. But as hard as I try I just cant seem to see poetry as anything other than dribble from selfish and emotionaly disturbed sympathy junkies. I'm sorry

Posted by: Jeff at July 19, 2006 06:12 PM (GJ63B)

5 Kiril, Just make it up. It's all good!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 19, 2006 07:01 PM (Ipin8)

6 Oh, I'm sure it is. ;-D It's just that being new to poetry, and exploring my own talents these last couple of years, I don't think I'm ready just yet to explore my inner Lewis Carroll. ;-D

Posted by: Kiril, The Mad Macedonian at July 19, 2006 08:01 PM (IF0uE)

7 I just explored my inner Lewis Carrol! ;-D Some of my best poems have just come out of the blue due to some sudden inspiration. Tonite was one such moment. ;-D Afer my lst comment the notion popped into my head to look at Carrolls poem again. I suddenly said to myself: "Self! You can do this! and I know how!" Click on my name, read the piece, let me know what you think, and if you like it, feel free spread the word. ;-D Thank You Annika, and Tuning Spork! ;-D And, of course, Lewis Carroll!

Posted by: Kiril, The Mad Macedonian Poet at July 19, 2006 09:15 PM (IF0uE)

8 Almost fergot, I'm so tired ( Long day! ). Thank YOU, too VICTOR!!! You was the one inspired to post about Nonsense Poems today in the 1st place! ;-D

Posted by: Kiril, The tired, and sleepy, Macedonian at July 19, 2006 09:20 PM (IF0uE)

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Victor here, off from work and a bit groggy still from anaesthetic. Long story.

I'm sorry annika is having computer difficulties and I hope she doesn't mind my jumping the gun. If she does, I'm blaming the anaesthetic, but Wednesday's just arent' the same without poetry.

I also blame the anaesthetic for any typos and major errors in grammar.

Joe Haldeman is a Viet Nam vet and science-fiction writer whose first novel, The Forever War, won both the Hugo and Nebula awards as best SF novel of the year. He's written many, many SF novels and short stories since, and also a fair bit of poetry.

His works frequently include military themes, and this is reflected in his poetry. Of course, I can't find one poem of his I'm particularly looking for; I fear the book it was in may have been given away during a move. It's a shame: It didn't really rhyme; instead, words were repeated in a specific pattern which gave it the quality of a chant. It's a shame you won't be reading it today.

Instead, I'll present one of his science fiction poems. As far as I know, Mr. Haldeman might be the first to combine science fiction and poetry. This particular example tells a story--a science fiction story, to be sure, but a story nevertheless, and to me it seems this story could only be told as a poem. It was linked from his website and also has a copyright notice at the bottom. Because of that, I present only the first stanza (I don't think the anaesthetic defense would protect annika) and I hope you click the link to finish the poem. I find it's quite touching.

Eighteen years old, October eleventh

Drunk for the first time in her life,
she tossed her head in a horsey laugh
and that new opal gift sailed off her sore earlobe,
in a graceful parabola,
pinged twice on the stone porch floor,
and rolled off to hide behind the rose bushes.

Read the rest of 'Eighteen years old, October eleventh'

Posted by: Victor at 11:25 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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On this day after Independence Day - I hope you had a good one! - here is a snapshot of America in 1860, by her greatest poet, Walt Whitman: more...

Posted by: annika at 07:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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