Ha! You thought I was going to write about Sean Penn, didn’t you? Well, I’m not. I can’t, not after his amazing performance in Milk. Besides, I find that I’m kind of liking him, now that he is displaying a sense of humor. (Note to Sean: if you had done this a while ago, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten all that bad press. Just sayin’. The marriage to Madonna thing though, can’t help you there. Count your blessings, you’re free of her.) I have to agree with one reviewer who said that the most astonishing thing about his performance is not that the character he is playing is gay, but that he smiles through most of the movie. Not just little tiny smiles, either. Great big happy smiles! Harvey was a happy guy. I wish I had known him. See Milk, great film.
No, I am writing about a great book I just read: The Devil’s Book of Verse, Masters of the Poison Pen from Ancient Times to the Present Day. A delightful compendium of acerbic and vitriolic bile, all done up in pretty poetic verse. And just look at that devil on the front. Isn’t he handsome? Who wouldn’t pick up a book with him on the cover?
The book is divided up into sections with names like: The Ship of State (dealing with politics), Paths of Virtue, Home and Hearth, The Joy of Living (not), Men and Women, General Naysaying, etc. (The subtitle for this last section is Miscellaneous Maledicta. Too bad I didn’t have this book when I was trying to think of a name for this blog. Is it too late to change??)
I think my favorites are the epitaphs. Like this one:
LORD CLIVE
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Here’s one from The Paths of Virtue:
ADDENDUM TO THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,
Nor the ox her husband brought her;
But thank the Lord you’re not forbidden
To covet your neighbor’s daughter.
- unknown
More epitaphs:
ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF MR. JONATHAN GILL, ESQ.
who died February 6, 1751
aged 45 years and six months
Beneath this smooth stone,
By the bone of his bone,
Sleeps Mr. Jonathan Gill,
By lies when alive this
attorney did thrive,
And now that he’s dead he
lies still.
- unknown
EPITAPH FOR JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN
Hotten
Rotten
Forgotten
- G.A. Sala
UNTITLED
Beneath this mound Charles Crocker now reposes;
Step lightly, strangers – also hold your noses.
- Ambrose Bierce
The poets do not spare their own:
EPITAPH ON A WELL-KNOWN POET
Robert Southey
Beneath these poppies buried deep,
The bones of Bob the Bard lie hid;
Peace to his manes; and may he sleep
As soundly as his readers did!
- Thomas Moore
(“manes” is defined as the spirit or shade of the departed person)
Nor do nursery rhymes escape:
THE TRUE STORY OF MARY AND HER LITTLE LAMB
Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow,
And every place that Mary went,
The lamb it would not go.
So Mary took that little lamb
And beat it for a spell;
The family had it fried next day –
And it went very well!
- unknown
Sometimes, they wax pornographic:
THE SEXUAL LIFE OF THE CAMEL
Oh, the sexual life of the camel
Is stranger than anyone thinks.
In moments of amorous passion,
He frequently buggers the Sphinx.
But the Sphinx’s posterior passage
Is clogged with the sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump on the camel,
And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.
- unknown
There’s this amusing ditty:
FRUSTRATION
If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk that give me pains;
Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon –
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.
- Dorothy Parker (she’s not bitter, not at all)
We’ve all had a guest like this:
ON NOMAN, A GUEST
Dear Mr. Noman, does it ever strike you,
The more we see of you, the less we like you?
- Hilaire Belloc
This is my kind of poetry! Pointed, biting, scathing. I could go on and on. This book is a bottomless viper pit of poetic bitterness. But I won’t. All I will say is if you can find a copy of this book, pick it up! Leave it on the coffee table or in the bathroom to amuse your guests, or to thoroughly ground yourself when things get a little too light and airy. (If I had a guest room, I might have that last piece written in calligraphy and framed. Maybe on a guest towel? Just leave it hanging on the rack and see if he gets the hint?) Shakespeare is also present, but I left him out. I have a whole book full of Elizabethan insults that may be the subject of a future blog entry. I do wish I had written this stuff myself, but, alas, it is not so. Maybe, another time, I’ll give it a whirl.
I will leave you with a piece which I think has a lot of truth to it. I don’t know when it was written, but I agree wholeheartedly with what it says. And I love the title.
LAMENT OF AN IDLE DEMON
It’s quiet in Hell just now, it’s very tame,
The devils and the damned alike lay snoring.
Just a faint smell of sulphur, not much flame;
The human souls come here and find it boring.
Satan, the poor old Puritan, sits there
Emitting mocking laughter once a minute;
Idly he scans a page of Baudelaire
And wonders how he once saw evil in it.
He sips his brimstone at the Demons’ Club
(His one amusement now he’s superseded)
And keeps complaining to Beelzebub
That men make hotter hells than ever he did.
- R.P. Lister
No, I am writing about a great book I just read: The Devil’s Book of Verse, Masters of the Poison Pen from Ancient Times to the Present Day. A delightful compendium of acerbic and vitriolic bile, all done up in pretty poetic verse. And just look at that devil on the front. Isn’t he handsome? Who wouldn’t pick up a book with him on the cover?
The book is divided up into sections with names like: The Ship of State (dealing with politics), Paths of Virtue, Home and Hearth, The Joy of Living (not), Men and Women, General Naysaying, etc. (The subtitle for this last section is Miscellaneous Maledicta. Too bad I didn’t have this book when I was trying to think of a name for this blog. Is it too late to change??)
I think my favorites are the epitaphs. Like this one:
LORD CLIVE
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Here’s one from The Paths of Virtue:
ADDENDUM TO THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,
Nor the ox her husband brought her;
But thank the Lord you’re not forbidden
To covet your neighbor’s daughter.
- unknown
More epitaphs:
ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF MR. JONATHAN GILL, ESQ.
who died February 6, 1751
aged 45 years and six months
Beneath this smooth stone,
By the bone of his bone,
Sleeps Mr. Jonathan Gill,
By lies when alive this
attorney did thrive,
And now that he’s dead he
lies still.
- unknown
EPITAPH FOR JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN
Hotten
Rotten
Forgotten
- G.A. Sala
UNTITLED
Beneath this mound Charles Crocker now reposes;
Step lightly, strangers – also hold your noses.
- Ambrose Bierce
The poets do not spare their own:
EPITAPH ON A WELL-KNOWN POET
Robert Southey
Beneath these poppies buried deep,
The bones of Bob the Bard lie hid;
Peace to his manes; and may he sleep
As soundly as his readers did!
- Thomas Moore
(“manes” is defined as the spirit or shade of the departed person)
Nor do nursery rhymes escape:
THE TRUE STORY OF MARY AND HER LITTLE LAMB
Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow,
And every place that Mary went,
The lamb it would not go.
So Mary took that little lamb
And beat it for a spell;
The family had it fried next day –
And it went very well!
- unknown
Sometimes, they wax pornographic:
THE SEXUAL LIFE OF THE CAMEL
Oh, the sexual life of the camel
Is stranger than anyone thinks.
In moments of amorous passion,
He frequently buggers the Sphinx.
But the Sphinx’s posterior passage
Is clogged with the sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump on the camel,
And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.
- unknown
There’s this amusing ditty:
FRUSTRATION
If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk that give me pains;
Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon –
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.
- Dorothy Parker (she’s not bitter, not at all)
We’ve all had a guest like this:
ON NOMAN, A GUEST
Dear Mr. Noman, does it ever strike you,
The more we see of you, the less we like you?
- Hilaire Belloc
This is my kind of poetry! Pointed, biting, scathing. I could go on and on. This book is a bottomless viper pit of poetic bitterness. But I won’t. All I will say is if you can find a copy of this book, pick it up! Leave it on the coffee table or in the bathroom to amuse your guests, or to thoroughly ground yourself when things get a little too light and airy. (If I had a guest room, I might have that last piece written in calligraphy and framed. Maybe on a guest towel? Just leave it hanging on the rack and see if he gets the hint?) Shakespeare is also present, but I left him out. I have a whole book full of Elizabethan insults that may be the subject of a future blog entry. I do wish I had written this stuff myself, but, alas, it is not so. Maybe, another time, I’ll give it a whirl.
I will leave you with a piece which I think has a lot of truth to it. I don’t know when it was written, but I agree wholeheartedly with what it says. And I love the title.
LAMENT OF AN IDLE DEMON
It’s quiet in Hell just now, it’s very tame,
The devils and the damned alike lay snoring.
Just a faint smell of sulphur, not much flame;
The human souls come here and find it boring.
Satan, the poor old Puritan, sits there
Emitting mocking laughter once a minute;
Idly he scans a page of Baudelaire
And wonders how he once saw evil in it.
He sips his brimstone at the Demons’ Club
(His one amusement now he’s superseded)
And keeps complaining to Beelzebub
That men make hotter hells than ever he did.
- R.P. Lister
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