"But with your rhubarb words must ye contend / To grieve me worse"

[larryhammer]

For a Poetry Monday, something a little more modern than Modernism:


Market Forecast, Alexa Selph

Adjectives continue
their downward spiral,
with adverbs likely to follow.

Wisdom, grace, and beauty
can be had three for a dollar,
as they head for a recession.

Diaphanous, filigree,
pearlescent, and love
are now available
at wholesale prices.

Verbs are still blue-chip investments,
but not many are willing to sell.

The image market is still strong,
but only for those rated AA or higher.
Beware of cheap imitations
sold by the side of the road.

Only the most conservative
consider rhyme a good option,
but its success in certain circles
warrants a brief mention.

The ongoing search for fresh
metaphor has caused concern
among environmental activists,

who warn that both the moon and the sea
have measurably diminished
since the dawn of the Romantic era.

Latter-day prosodists are having to settle
for menial positions in poultry plants,
where an aptitude for repetitive rhythms
is considered a valuable trait.

The outlook for the future remains uncertain,
and troubled times may lie ahead.
Supply will continue to outpace demand,
and the best of the lot will remain unread.


(Published November 2001, to give a little cultural/political context.)

---L.

Subject quote from "Astrophel and Stella," #14, Philip Sidney.

Comments

[asakiyume]

That is marvelous--I'm going to share it with a friend.

[larryhammer]

:-)

[swan_tower]

Random belated question, as I am continuing to write down the poems I have open in tabs: your subject quote, from that Sidney poem. "Rhubarb words"? WTF?

[larryhammer]

I think here it's rhubarb in the sense of a heated dispute -- so, argumentative in a barbed-comment sort of way. It's a surprisingly old sense, that.

It still sounds a bit silly to the modern ear, thus my using it for the subject -- for the silliness, and to highlight that the post is about words.

[swan_tower]

Ah, got it. It hit me very oddly because my sister and I once did a deliberately terrible translation of the Catullus poem about the dead sparrow that ended with something about "my girlfriend is crying because there is rhubarb in her eye" (I can't remember what word we "mistook" for rhubarb), and so I had a brief moment of "whaaaaa? Did we accidentally hit almost upon a thing that's real?"

[larryhammer]

*snrk*