European Yoga Doodles

Daily Dose

From Selected Poems, by Charlotte Mew

I SO LIKED SPRING

I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here;-
The thrushes too-
Because it was these you so liked to hear-
I so liked you.

This year's a different thing,-
I'll not think of you.
But I'll like the Spring because it is simply spring
As the thrushes do.

A Caricature

Carefully Edited Clerihew

DAVID SEDARIS

David Sedaris
Does not mean to scare us,
So he's deleted the creeps
From his new published Pepys.

Daily Dose

From Talking Heads, by Alan Bennett

SO

"So I wrote back saying I hadn't been expecting another letter and there was no need to have written again and was this an appropriate use of public resources?  They didn't even bother to reply.  Typical."

From A Lady of Letters

A Caricature

Clerihew for the Immortal Bird

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Mississippi still damns
Tennessee Williams
For, while he was a native son,
He played their sins out, one by one.

Daily Dose

From Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

FINALLY

Finally it remains to be said that hardly a trace of this distress was detectable to a stranger.  (In my particular case, the chief thing to survive is the memory of unlimited kindness.)

From Chapter 4, The Marches of Transylvania

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson

SOMETIMES

“Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.”

Clerihew for the Poet's Personal God

WALLACE STEVENS

Odds are even
That Wallace Stevens'
"Supreme Fiction"
Proved a true prediction.

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Days Tangier Journal: 1987 - 1989, by Paul Bowles

December 26

"The most ridiculous gadget of the year, in the show window of an Indian shop on the Boulevard Pasteur: a deodorant stick with a built-in compass."

Imperial Clerihew

SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

Siddhartha Mukherjee,
That Emperor of Maladies,
Explores yet another -- to me -- deep mystery
In The Gene: An Intimate History.

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Under the Frog, by Tibor Fischer

DON'T FORGET

"'Don't forget what I said about good books.  And read the Bible occasionally.  It's had some good reviews, you know.' Ladanyi's tone in this farewell admonition was not that of a salesman, or a friend recommending a good read, but rather that of a visitor handing a prisoner a loaf of bread with a file in it."

From January 1949

Clerihew for Mme. Denis

VOLTAIRE

Voltaire's
Sole heir's
Opinion was that she'd been screwed,
When they gave her a statue of the old boy -- nude.

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Genet: A Biography, by Edmund White

HAROLD ACTON MEETS GENET

"'He told Cocteau that it was not enough for an author to watch his heroes live and pity them: ""We should take their sins upon ourselves and suffer the consequences.""'"

From Chapter X

Clerihew for the Wretched

FRANTZ FANON
 
Frantz Fanon
Imposed upon
The children of privilege, for what it's worth,
At least to read The Wretched of the Earth.

Clerihew for the Bearded Straight Boy

THE BOOKSTORE HIPSTER

One wonders if, to know himself,
The hipster reader's whole bookshelf
Still all is
Just David Foster Wallace?

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems in English, by Joseph Brodsky

I THREW MY ARMS ABOUT THOSE SHOULDERS, GLANCING

I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing
at what emerged behind that back,
and saw a chair pushed slightly forward,
merging now with the lighted wall.
The lamp glared too bright to show
the shabby furniture to some advantage,
and that is why sofa of brown leather
shone a sort of yellow in a corner.
The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,
the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame
a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboard
seemed to me to have some animation.
But a moth flitted round the room,
causing my arrested glance to shift;
and if at any time a ghost had lived here,
he now was gone, abandoning this house.

Clerihew of the Undead Translator

NORMAN DENNY

Norman Denny
Hasn't many
Fans left of the hatchet job
He made of Les Misérables.*

*Except Penguin, which can't resist reprinting Denny's bowdlerized translation 'cause it's, you know, free.

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, translated by Norman Denny

YOU WHO

"I say to you who love that all these things are contained in love.  You must learn to find them."

From Part Four, Book Five, Chapter IV, The Heart Beneath the Stone

Clerihew Not on It's Best Behavior

MARY GAITSKILL

Mary Gaitskill
Couldn't wait 'til
Her readers had the chance to savor
All her stories of Bad Behavior.

Daily Dose

From Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays, by Mary Gaitskill

AS MUCH

“If you can’t see inside the heart no matter how you look, then why not look? Why not see as much as you can?”

From Lost Cat

Clerihew of the Plow

WILLA CATHER

Rather gather
Willa Cather
Thought a woman's life on the prairie
Less bucolic than cautionary.

Daily Dose

From One of Ours, by Willa Cather

COUNTRY

"The country people never had to spend money for doctors, but cured all diseases with roots and herbs, and when the old folks had the rheumatism they took 'one of dem jenny-pigs' to bed with them, and the guinea-pig drew out all the pain."

From Book Three, Chapter X

Clerihew on the Road to Damascus

LEO TOLSTOY

Soldier-boy
Leo Tolstoy
Broke his saber, shouted, "Hosanna!"
And promptly returned to Yasnaya Polyana.

Daily Dose

From Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume One, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

NEAT

"He was exceedingly neat, elegantly dressed, fresh-looking, and had self-confidently modest manners and a very youthful, almost childlike, appearance which made one unconsciously forgive the expression of self-satisfaction and of a desire to mitigate the degree of his superiority over you, which his intelligent face, and especially his smile, always showed."

From A Moscow Acquaintance

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch

VERY QUIET

"It is very quiet  in the house.  In the whole neighborhood, actually.  Everyone's sleeping.  And only then does Ove realize that the cat will probably wake at the sound of the shot.  Will probably scare the living daylights out of the poor critter, Ove admits.  He thinks about this for a good while before he determinedly sets down the rifle and goes into the kitchen to turn on the radio.  Not that he needs music to take his own life, and not that he likes the idea of the radio clicking its way through units of electricity when he's gone.  But because if the cat wakes up from the bang, it may end up thinking it's just a part of one of those modern pop songs the radio plays all the time these days.  And then go back to sleep.  That is Ove's train of thought."

From Chapter 32, A Man Called Ove Isn't Running a Damned Hotel

Breakfast at the Bookstore #115

A Caricature

A Clerihew for Zorba

NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

Nikos Kazantzakis
Ends every fracas
With a jape at the Fates
Rather than a pile of broken plates.

Daily Dose

From Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Peter Bien

AS FOR ME

"'As for me,' he said, 'when I crave something, do you know what I do? I eat and eat until I'm satiated.'"

From Chapter XVII

A Caricature

Clerihew of the Lost Cause

ALLEN TATE

Allen Tate
Has met his fate;
Now he is but little read
And numbered among the Confederate Dead.

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems 1919 - 1976, by Allen Tate

ART

When you are come by ways emptied of light
You'll say goodbye, in that indifferent gloom,
To the quick draughts of old, yet with polite
Anguish of pride recall as an heirloom
A dawn when stars dropped gold about your head
And, so amazed, you knew not were you dead.

For, brother, know that this is art, and you
With a cold incautious sorrow stricken dumb,
Have your own vanishing slit of light let through,
Passionate as winter, where only a few may come:
Not idiots in the street find out the lees
In the last drink of dying Socrates.

Well Traveled Clerihew

GUY DELISLE

The memorabilia
Of Guy Delisle:
Pencils, notebooks, passports, and visas,
And inoculations for foreign diseases.

Daily Dose

From South Riding, by Winifred Holtby

SENSE

"It was with a sense of exhilaration that she returned to her final shopping. Confession to her friend had lifted a burden of responsibility from her shoulders."

From Book Vi, Chapter 6

Clerihew Tremendismo

CAMILO JOSE CELA

Camilo José Cela
Was a bloody difficult fella.
As you'll learn if you get even part way
Through La familia de Pascual Duarte.
 

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Letters to His Son, by the Earl of Chesterfield

IF I

"If I form any conjectures, I keep them to myself, not to be disproved by the event; but, in truth, I form none: I might have known, but would not."

From Letter CCXXI, dated Blackheath, May 18, O. S. 1758

A Caricature

Clerihew for a Chicago Stylist

JOSEPH EPSTEIN

Joseph Epstein
Falls somewhere between
His English betters
And the Groucho Marx Letters.

Daily Dose

From Letters to His Son, by the Earl of Chesterfield

"There is nothing so necessary, but at the same time there is nothing more difficult (I know by experience) for you young fellows, than to know how to behave yourselves prudently toward those whom you do not like.  Your passions are warm, and your heads are light; you hate all those who oppose your views, either of ambition or love; and a rival, in either, is almost an enemy."

From Letter CLXXIX, dated London, September 29, 1752

Clerihew at the Homesick Restaurant

ANNE TYLER

Anne Tyler:
Official compiler
Of Baltimore's
Un-cared-fors.