Charles Fourier was a 19th century French social theorist who thought that the oceans would one day be lemonade and that instead of dogs in the future people would lead giraffes around on leashes. He posited a new world of love, in which the only concern people had was their love relationships. He was an enormous inspiration for the surrealists and for many of the utopians involved in May 1968 in Paris. He was also some kind of Christian, who believed that God had told him all these things to come. So, the notion of this contest is to dream a little of the marvels that are, and the marvels to come. Contest closes on Tuesday June 8th, at 4 am. Poems over 30 lines shall be DQ'd, and voting will be done on Tuesday, by entrants (can't vote for your own poem) or by regular contributors, and shall be concluded at 11 pm on Tuesday June 8th. Here's something to initiate the contest:
MEANDERING RIVERS OF MILK
If the mountains were less desolate
The wolves would not return
If the rivers were any flatter
The trains would burn along their routes
If the creameries would one day run dry
The police officers would have their coffee black
If Holsteins were Jerseys
Milk would flow from Delhi to Silver Springs and beyond
Giant crabs would walk the shores
Cars appear naturally with circular tires
Things of nature like the green hydraulic pumps of dinosaurs
If mice wore velvet mittens,
Oreos would roll from NYC to Jodhpur
And for every illness milk would be the cure.
17 comments:
If beggers had wishes,
Who would hold their horses?
That should be beggars, I suppose, but I certainly don't understand why it would be spelled that way. It beggars my imagination.
If children were bombs,
Jihadis would praise promiscuity.
Craig, this must be an etymological problem, so I looked up beggar and etymology and got this:
From Old French begart, originally a member of the Beghards, a lay brotherhood of mendicants in the Low Countries, from Middle Dutch beggaert "mendicant," with pejorative suffix; the order is said to be named after the Liege priest Lambert le Bègue (French for "Lambert the Stammerer"); others claim it's from Middle English beggere or beggare, from beggen (“‘to beg’”) + -are (“‘-er’”)
It looks like in French the thing would be pronounced beg-ahr
So maybe that's why it remained.
We have a lot of anomalies in English spelling and a lot of it has to do with etymology. There must be someone who has devoted their life to studying this problem but I don't know who it is, or where they've published their magnum opus.
It's an interesting problem!
The first chapter of Stevenson's Catriona is headed A Beggar On Horseback. It's the sequel to Kidnapped, describing the history of David Balfour's romantic relationship with Catriona Drummond. Wishes are horses in Stevenson's book, and his beggers are beggars.
Hmm, to vote, to vote.
It seems to me that there are three contributions, Kirby's post, Craig's first, and GM's.
I like them all, but my vote goes to Craig's, "who would hold their horses?"
If you know country music, the answer is pretty obvious: the barmaids. But that's a different story.
Voting closes tonight at 11.
I'll vote for GM Palmer's piece, just to even things up.
not much of a contest this time around, but what the heck. Let's have a Helen Thomas contest next: poem with the most jazz at ninety.
Well then I'll be fair and vote for Kirby! :D
i pertikularly luvved th
semanntik diskors on beggar begger
i vote for kirbys milk poem
maybe everyone was caught off guard
i was travelling again
and
i don't understand surrealism anyway
so the future is bleak all the time
it's a wonder that we still know how to breathe
jh
It looks like I won, then. Two votes to one and one.
I should have these contests late at night more often when there's so little competition, and then have the voting again between five and six am when only I roll out of bed, and vote.
Maybe we could have have a sleazeball contest, soon, too. A Joran Van der Sloot contest.
is joran vandersloot
a surrealist
congratulations
milk boy
jh
Kirby,
I don't think you've thought the early morning vote through. It's one thing only you would vote, but it's another that the vote you cast can't be for yourself. How would you ever win?
I would have to change the rules, Stu, so that between 4:01 am and 4:02 am you could not only vote for yourself, but every vote counted for a million votes.
That would pretty much peg me as the Kim Jong-Il of poetry contests, but you know, there are certain satisfactions in being Kim Jong-Il.
Kirby,
That would pretty much peg me as the Kim Jong-Il of poetry contests, but you know, there are certain satisfactions in being Kim Jong-Il.
Nero is perhaps a more apt comparison, since Nero had artistic pretenses, and did compete for prizes in poetry, etc. I'll note, though, that poets would withdraw rather than compete against him (you didn't want to beat Nero, trust me on this), and that in the end, it didn't work out well for him.
I often wonder how blinded the Romans were to the frequent inability of youths to lead because of Octavian's extraordinary ability to lead.
It landed the Romans quickly with Caligula and Nero--who would have done better with some folks to tell them "no."
Like most teenagers.
GM,
I often wonder how blinded the Romans were to the frequent inability of youths to lead because of Octavian's extraordinary ability to lead.
Excellent point. It seems to me that leadership is in part innate, in part modeled, in part taught, and in part developed through experience. Communities that can maintain good leadership do good vetting of leaders up front, they provide good models of leadership and intentional training in leadership, and finally they provide opportunities for young leaders to exercise leadership, often with the assistance/supervision/oversight of someone older and wiser.
A problem with dictatorships is that they choke off the air-supply of leadership training and opportunity for the next generation, as well as the opportunity to vet leaders prior to their need. From time to time, you're going to end up taking pot-luck on the unvetted and unprepared. Sometimes you'll be lucky, but often-times not.
I see in this a particular issue for our churches. If church leadership only ever rests with established and proven leaders, then there will come a time when it is thrust willy-nilly onto unprepared leaders. We need to be intentional about providing opportunities for leaders to grown (and fail!) before it is a matter of congregational life-or-death.
That's why the violent nature of the Republic until Octavian's ascension really doomed the burgeoning Empire--and it wasn't until Nerva got the idea to pick a very strong and trainable successor that things got off the ground.
Octavian's big failure was to insist on a close blood relation--even though he ended up with Tiberius it lead to Caligula.
He should have paid attention to the distant uncle who adopted him posthumously.
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