Post by firefolk on Jan 11, 2010 17:55:27 GMT -5
So I was in Burger King this afternoon, revolving the great sociopolitical problems of our time in my mind--as one does at Burger King--when my attention was suddenly caught by the inscription on the trash can across the room. I believe that BK's "Operation: Let's Write Witticisms Upon Every Two-Dimensional Surface We Can Legally Put Our Hands On" is a nationwide phenomenon; but in case this particular item has not imprinted itself on your memory, I will reproduce it here:
Toss it in. Drop it in.
Slide it in off your tray.
Just get your trash
In here some way.
The rhyme scheme here is perfectly simple and legitimate. ABCB is a construction to which no student of the arts could object. No, 'twas the metrical system that concerned me. My initial impulse was to dismiss it as a piece of random doggerel, but--like the dots on the ceiling of Frost's Objectivity Room in That Hideous Strength--it tormented me with the promise of a regularity hovering just outside my grasp. Upon further inspection, I deduced that the poem was composed entirely of dimeters: but, folks, what a motley medley of dimeters!
The first line is clearly dactylic: one stressed beat and two unstressed, "TOSS it in, DROP it in." The second line is anapestic, the exact reverse: "slide it IN off your TRAY." And the third and fourth lines are simple iambs: "just GET your TRASH / in HERE some WAY." Now. . . it is certainly an intriguing innovation to switch (one might almost say "to careen") from one meter to another, not only in mid-poem, but in mid-stanza. I must respect the intrepidity of the BK versification apparatus. (I'm assuming these poems are all written by a giant machine somewhere in the Midwest, probably powered by baby harp seals.) But does it work?
My friends, I fear I cannot answer that question in the affirmative. Had lines 3 and 4 been a single tetrametric line, they would have been perfectly reasonable (although obviously they would have required yet another line after them to round out the stanza); but as discrete poetic entities, they cannot stand. Iambs are a military order, meant for the phalanx: it is not well for iambs to be in groups of fewer than three. And as for lines 1 and 2--by itself, each works quite well, but the abrupt transition from dactyl to anapest is frankly jarring and has no true place in the annals of seal-powered-computer-generated trash can literature. Let us salute BK for their valorous attempt--but let us also point at them and make fun of their failure.
Toss it in. Drop it in.
Slide it in off your tray.
Just get your trash
In here some way.
The rhyme scheme here is perfectly simple and legitimate. ABCB is a construction to which no student of the arts could object. No, 'twas the metrical system that concerned me. My initial impulse was to dismiss it as a piece of random doggerel, but--like the dots on the ceiling of Frost's Objectivity Room in That Hideous Strength--it tormented me with the promise of a regularity hovering just outside my grasp. Upon further inspection, I deduced that the poem was composed entirely of dimeters: but, folks, what a motley medley of dimeters!
The first line is clearly dactylic: one stressed beat and two unstressed, "TOSS it in, DROP it in." The second line is anapestic, the exact reverse: "slide it IN off your TRAY." And the third and fourth lines are simple iambs: "just GET your TRASH / in HERE some WAY." Now. . . it is certainly an intriguing innovation to switch (one might almost say "to careen") from one meter to another, not only in mid-poem, but in mid-stanza. I must respect the intrepidity of the BK versification apparatus. (I'm assuming these poems are all written by a giant machine somewhere in the Midwest, probably powered by baby harp seals.) But does it work?
My friends, I fear I cannot answer that question in the affirmative. Had lines 3 and 4 been a single tetrametric line, they would have been perfectly reasonable (although obviously they would have required yet another line after them to round out the stanza); but as discrete poetic entities, they cannot stand. Iambs are a military order, meant for the phalanx: it is not well for iambs to be in groups of fewer than three. And as for lines 1 and 2--by itself, each works quite well, but the abrupt transition from dactyl to anapest is frankly jarring and has no true place in the annals of seal-powered-computer-generated trash can literature. Let us salute BK for their valorous attempt--but let us also point at them and make fun of their failure.
