Comments on: Firsts

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:42:44 +0000

i was sorely tempted in an earlier comment to say that people should take prudent precautions to protect their property, but that was more alliteration than i could allow myself to utter. your parody...

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:35:44 +0000

Understood, Bryan. Poetry differs from one language to another. And yes, spending a lot of time using a language other than English irreversibly affects one’s English style. In high school, I really concentrated on German, and it changed my English prose forever. Now I have trouble reading a typical German newspaper. (Sigh!)

But as you point out, English rhyme is easy, especially if you’re willing to employ slant-rhymes, multiple-word rhymes, etc. in the manner of G&S, Ogden Nash, etc. And the expected level of political verse on the web is not terribly high, which is why I do not hang up my pen, so to speak. Again, I do hope you produce and publish more. This one was a lot of fun.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:17:18 +0000

Rusty indeed, as I have read a good deal more Russian than English poetry and rhyme is not as important as alliteration. In an endings-based language, where the function of words is identified by the ending and sentence position is not extremely important, rhyme is child’s play. Alliteration in meter is altogether another problem and that is generally considered a higher accomplishment.

You will see the effect of writing in Russian for so many years in some of the odd constructs that I use. My written “voice” is very different from my spoken voice.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:55:07 +0000

“Sometimes things write themselves, other times all the work in the world won’t make it happen.” – Bryan

That’s how it is, with both parody and doggerel: some of them do, indeed, practically write themselves.

It does help to write verse frequently and throw out the stuff you don’t like. If you wait for perfect moments of inspiration, you could wait a long time, and the skills themselves get rusty while you wait.

Your first published parody is better than 90 percent of what I run across on the web (and needless to say I seek out such things), so I really do hope you’ll do more. If you don’t want to post them on your political blog, you could always set up a separate blog for them… but if you decide to do that, you absolutely must tell me where to find that blog.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:21:22 +0000

It happened, it will probably never happen again. Sometimes things write themselves, other times all the work in the world won’t make it happen.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:41:18 +0000

“Senator,” you’re no Mad Kane…

But I do hope you’ll do it again. An excellent first effort!