Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Add a consonant and stir

Poet Harry Matthews, in response to a gauntlet thrown down by the ever-poetical Kenneth Koch, wrote a poem beginning with a tampered line from Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day." The tampering consisted in the slight-of-hand swapping of a "b" for a "d," such that the poem compares the ubiquitous thee to a summer's bay. While not stunning, Matthews poem "Lateral Disregard" has a grace about it, with its languid hours and curious fish.

Here are a few tampered first lines from a few of Wyatt's sonnets. Make some grace.

"Unstabled dream according to the place"
"Though I myself be brindled of my mind"
"Because I still kept thee from flies and flame"

On swapping consonants, the Dickinsonian oracle recommends:

Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes -
Larger than mine - serener -
Involving statelier sums.

I check my busy pencil -
My fingers file away -
Wherefore, my baffled fingers
Thy perplexity?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home