Parody # 1: “Un vieil imbécile sans pitié”

MANCHESTER NH. - OCTOBER 9: Ex Vice Pres. Joe Biden makes the sign of the cross after speaking about Giuliani speaks to supporters at an event at McIntyre Ski resort on October 9, 2019 in Manchester, NH. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

With apologies and thanks to Charles Dodgson, The Varnished Culture offers some poetical parodies (based on great poems) to synthesize our thoughts on the preceding and forthcoming years… “Un vieil imbécile sans pitié“ (Inspired by “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats)   O, what can ail thee, Joe Biden, Alone and palely loitering? The right has pulled-back from D.C.  And no tweets sting.   I see creases on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever dew, And in the gardens fades the rose: Fast withereth too.   You met a lady on the Hill Full socialist, and Woke,…

Continue Reading →

Consolations of Confinement

October 9, 2020 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | LIFE, Poetry |

(In the Plague Year 2020) We lingered palely, house-bound, deadly tired, Blue flames from tripods hectored, then expired, The sickness hot, the master quit for fear, His office, and he left no staffer there. In the rooms the plague-scare came and went, Breathless about the window and the vent, Pressing talk of destruction and pandemic And the pressing need to ‘not to panic’. From wise mouths we’d heard so much about: Pedantry and oppression, shrill calling-out Of the heterodox. We strove to find the silver lining, The voice of the Swedish-Doom-Goblin, declining. Planetary plague, hung o’er a high-viced city, Poison in…

Continue Reading →

The Art of Plague by cOvid

May 19, 2020 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Poetry |

Arnold Böcklin, "Plague," (1898)

cOvid wants attention; cOvid just wants love. He went AWOL, attached himself As a hand into a glove; Banished by his Masters, Self-distanced, not alone, Conceived on the wing – loitering, At the window’s secure zone.   Bat-munching barbarians Will take official blame; When Dr Who comes calling, Suspects all look the same. Wash the razor with a hose, Sluice the wastage down the drain; Fresh mops and a butcher’s pail Will carry away the stain. Nothing to do with us; We smile, and calculate: The number the next beast into The crock pot shall decimate.

Continue Reading →

Homage to Catullus

May 9, 2019 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | HISTORY, Poetry |

A rumination: Farts foreshadow faeces, Poppers presage poo; When they start, and carry on There’s little else to do But find yourself a toilet And sit yourself right down, Unless your suiting will assume A savage shade of brown.  

Continue Reading →

Les Murray

17 October 1938 – 29 April 2019 A canonical poet, Murray couldn’t be bothered either to hide his faults or his reactionary tendencies. As Peter Porter wrote of him: “A skewer of polemic runs through his work. His brilliant manipulation of language, his ability to turn words into installations of reality, is often forced to hang on an embarrassing moral sharpness. The parts we love – the Donne-like baroque – live side by side with sentiments we don’t: his increasingly automatic opposition to liberalism and intellectuality.” And in fact, his vast body of work is somewhat uneven and even, at…

Continue Reading →

© Copyright 2014 The Varnished Culture All Rights Reserved. TVC Disclaimer. Site by KWD&D.