So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Fun titles edition!

Today, I will select poems relatively at random to post here, based solely on the promise/awesomeness of the title. Titling a poem can be colossally difficult -- so difficult that I often wish I could make like Emily Dickinson and just forgo titles all together. The poems I'm pasting in below I only chose to read because of the title (I found them all on Representative Poetry Online ).

Up first we have....

A book a jug and a dame

by everyone's favorite timeless poet, Anonymous

A book a jug and a dame,
And a nice cozy nook for the same;

"And I don't care a damn,"
Said Omar Khayyam,
"What you say, it's a great little game."

Alright, so it's more of a limerick...but I didn't know that until I read it. And I only read it because the title made me smile.

The next one that caught my eye was

The eyes of toads are great

by E.D. Blodgett (b. 1935)

The eyes of toads are great
wells of sadness: where
do they gaze but into fate

to see nothing there?

Hmmm. This is probably actually untitled and just titled with the first line for indexing purposes. And the first line is sneaky because it's not that the eyes of toads are "great" so much as "great wells of sadness." I feel tricked.

Moving on.....

Recipe for a Salad
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes,
passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.

O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."

Really wish I had eaten lunch before sitting down to blog.

Oh, the Sexual Life of the Camel is another anonymous limerick too silly/vulgar to reproduce here, but click on the link to read it.

I can't believe this is for real; it's like the Onion version of a poem title:

On the Dark, Still, Dry Warm Weather, Occasionally Happening in the Winter Months
Gilbert White (1720-1793)

....I can't bring myself to paste it. It's a 44-line poem in rhyming couplets about mild weather.

Finally, I found this title intriguing and can't decide how I feel about the poem itself....but it's certainly interesting. And angry and gutsy. I think I like it? I don't know. Some of the line breaks feel really random (probably intentionally so) and that bugs me. After reading it a few times, I do think it's more sophisticated/complex than it initially appears. It's a rant, but a well-crafted rant and I guess it's got me thinking, which is a good thing.

Male Rage Poem

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (b. 1949)

Feminism, baby, feminism.

This is the anti-feminist poem.

It will get called the anti-

feminist poem. Like it or not.

Dedicated to all my friends who

can't get it up in the night,

accused of having male rage during the

day. This is for the poor buggers.

This is for me and the incredible boredom

of arguing about feminism, the right

arguments, the wrong arguments, the

circular argument, the arguments that stem

from one bad affair, from one

bad job, no job -- whatever; fill in the

blanks _____ _____, fill in the ways

in which you have been hurt. Then I'll

fill in the blanks, and we'll send rosters

of hurt to each other, mail them, stock

them for the record to say: Giorgio Di Cicco

has been hurt this way x many times.

We will stock closets of Sarah's hurt,

Barbara's hurt, my hurt, Bobby's hurt.

This is where the poem peters out ... oops! -- that's

penis mentality, that's patriarchal bullshit,

sexist diction and These line lengths are

male oriented.

Where did he get so much male rage?

From standing out like a man for a bunch of

years, and being called the dirty word.

"When you are 21 you will become a Man."

Christ! Doomed to enslave women ipso

facto, without even the right training.

Shouldn't have wasted ten years playing

baseball; should have practiced

whipping, should have practiced tying up the

girl next door, giving her cigarette burns ...

oops! Male rage again! MALE RAGE -- the words ring out --

worse than RING AROUND THE COLLAR, worse than KISSED

THE GIRLS AND MADE THEM CRY, jeezus, male rage

in kindergarten. MALE RAGE. You've got

male rage; I look inside myself and scrounge

for all this male rage. Must be there

somewhere. Must be repressing it. I write poems

faster and faster, therapeutically, to make sure

I get all the rage out. But someone's

always there to say, Male Rage -- more Male Rage.

I don't leave the house, workin' on my male rage.

Things may lighten up. My friends may meet

fine women at a party someday and know

what to say to them, like "I'm not a Man and

you're not a Woman, but let's have dinner

anyway, let's fuck with our eyes closed and

swap roles for an hour."

I'm tired of being a man.

Of having better opportunities,

better job offers,

too much money.

I'm tired of going to the YMCA and

talking jock in the locker room.

I'm tired of all those poems where

I inadvertently used the word "whore."

I'm tired of having little blonde secretaries type out

all my poems for me.

I'm tired of being a man.

I'm tired of being a sexist.

I'm afraid of male rage.

I'm afraid of my male rage,

this growing thing, this buddy, this

shadow, this new self, this stranger.

It's there. It's there! How could it have

happened? I ate the right things, said

yes to my mother, thought the good

thoughts.

Doc -- give it to me straight.

How long before this male rage

takes over completely?

The rest of your life.

Take it like a man.