Professor Roy and the Amazingly Bad Poetry (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} reallybadpoetry) wrote,@ 2008-01-23 17:39:00 |
|
ABPJ Review - Penelope Strings Her Bow
Penelope Strings Her Bow
by Melissa; unknown location
I am Penelope; I am tired.
My fingers ache from 20 years of weaving,
Sitting straight at my distaff and loom.
Each morning I unseal my eyes to the sound
Of your movements across the sea,
Sailing farther and farther and farther
From me and love.
I've slept alone, shivering in an olive bed,
Chained and chaste to its great solid roots,
While you sail, sail to women who love you hard.
Oh, severe mercy of Death!
Why not send me away to brave deeds too?
The greatest punishment is to be left, cold.
Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth.
Menacing whispers tickle my ears.
My weaving is done, the unraveling too.
I will weave my own shroud of death.
So, just as I return to a lonely bed each night,
My beloved Odysseus will return to sadness as well.
Oh, I'm tired too. So tired.
Time for a history lesson, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know how familiar each of you are in classic literature, but being an English major who graduated with a stretched-taut 'B' average, I can tell you that the Penelope in this poem is, of course, Penelope Ann Miller, star of such movies as "Big Top Pee-Wee" and the Arnold Schwarzenegger cop-thriller "Kindergarten Cop." I always thought that she would have made a great (adult-ish) Mary Jane Watson if a "Spider-Man" movie had been made in the late 80's -- provided they somehow dispensed with Peter Parker's teenage origins and ... what? My geekiness is making you sick? Okay, I'm done. Soon I will be talking about the Odyssey, which is nerdy, instead of geeky. Penelope Ann Miller should not be confused with Penélope Cruz, actress and former love slave of Emperor Xenu. Penélope Cruz should not be confused with Salma Hayek.
Okay, enough. The particular Penelope in this poem is a character in "The Odyssey", the epic poem by Homer. Penelope (Holly Hunter) is married to a Greek king (George Clooney), whose name is Ulysses (aka Odysseus). Interrupted from a pleasant evening spent dining in hell, Ulysses runs off to fight in the Trojan War, which lasts ten years because they went over budget and because a few millenia later, a distant relative of Agamemnon would give birth to Donald Rumsfeld. Thank you! This is hard enough for any wife to endure, but since this is an epic poem and Homer was paid by the couplet, he spends another ten years trying to get home to his wife and son. He could have made the trip in a few months, but he refused to stop and ask for directions! Please tip your waitresses! Meanwhile, Penelope busies herself with studying their family's genealogy on the Mac, before realizing that they are at the beginning of civilization. So she takes up other hobbies, which including weaving, un-weaving, rejecting various evil suitors who want to move in on Ulysses' territory, and contemplating suicide. Like you do. More or less, that takes us up to where we are in the poem. Oh, and one of the legs of their marital bed is an olive tree, thus the "olive bed." Those Greeks and their olives. I know the Odyssey is not to be taken literally, but my family used to have an olive tree in our front yard and you would not believe the mess it made. Presuming Ulysses and Penny had post-business-trip sex when he finally stumbled back into Ithaca (drunk as usual), I'm sure there was olive muck all over them by the end.
As for the poem itself, I dearly hope that this was written for a high school assignment. Because if it isn't, Melissa loves "The Odyssey" way too much. Someone should either lock her in a room with nothing but Dean Koontz and John Grisham books, for a year. She'll be either insane or "cured" by the end of the 365 days. Unless she's going for her professorship on Ancient Greek poetry, it seems to me that her fandom would be better spent on "Heroes" slash fiction between Mohinder and Matt -- especially if we judge her fandom on the quality of this poem. Really, "unseal my eyes"? I think Melissa is saying that Penelope is tearing her eyes away from her fruitless search of the horizon, but I smell an abused thesaurus. It smells of mortality. "Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth." - Death's conquests? Are the old ladies spreading unfair rumors about death? Isn't it a big leap of faith to assume that the old ladies of Ithaca had teeth? "While you sail, sail to women who love you hard." Ooh, no she didn't! "Honey, I promise I didn't touch the sirens! I swear! Demodocus wanted me to, but I said, 'hey, man, I love Penelope! I can't do that to her' Honey? I brought you something from Troy. ... It's right here in my ... Crap, I think we must have tossed it at the Cyclops."
Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: D+
Penelope Strings Her Bow
by Melissa; unknown location
I am Penelope; I am tired.
My fingers ache from 20 years of weaving,
Sitting straight at my distaff and loom.
Each morning I unseal my eyes to the sound
Of your movements across the sea,
Sailing farther and farther and farther
From me and love.
I've slept alone, shivering in an olive bed,
Chained and chaste to its great solid roots,
While you sail, sail to women who love you hard.
Oh, severe mercy of Death!
Why not send me away to brave deeds too?
The greatest punishment is to be left, cold.
Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth.
Menacing whispers tickle my ears.
My weaving is done, the unraveling too.
I will weave my own shroud of death.
So, just as I return to a lonely bed each night,
My beloved Odysseus will return to sadness as well.
Oh, I'm tired too. So tired.
Time for a history lesson, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know how familiar each of you are in classic literature, but being an English major who graduated with a stretched-taut 'B' average, I can tell you that the Penelope in this poem is, of course, Penelope Ann Miller, star of such movies as "Big Top Pee-Wee" and the Arnold Schwarzenegger cop-thriller "Kindergarten Cop." I always thought that she would have made a great (adult-ish) Mary Jane Watson if a "Spider-Man" movie had been made in the late 80's -- provided they somehow dispensed with Peter Parker's teenage origins and ... what? My geekiness is making you sick? Okay, I'm done. Soon I will be talking about the Odyssey, which is nerdy, instead of geeky. Penelope Ann Miller should not be confused with Penélope Cruz, actress and former love slave of Emperor Xenu. Penélope Cruz should not be confused with Salma Hayek.
Okay, enough. The particular Penelope in this poem is a character in "The Odyssey", the epic poem by Homer. Penelope (Holly Hunter) is married to a Greek king (George Clooney), whose name is Ulysses (aka Odysseus). Interrupted from a pleasant evening spent dining in hell, Ulysses runs off to fight in the Trojan War, which lasts ten years because they went over budget and because a few millenia later, a distant relative of Agamemnon would give birth to Donald Rumsfeld. Thank you! This is hard enough for any wife to endure, but since this is an epic poem and Homer was paid by the couplet, he spends another ten years trying to get home to his wife and son. He could have made the trip in a few months, but he refused to stop and ask for directions! Please tip your waitresses! Meanwhile, Penelope busies herself with studying their family's genealogy on the Mac, before realizing that they are at the beginning of civilization. So she takes up other hobbies, which including weaving, un-weaving, rejecting various evil suitors who want to move in on Ulysses' territory, and contemplating suicide. Like you do. More or less, that takes us up to where we are in the poem. Oh, and one of the legs of their marital bed is an olive tree, thus the "olive bed." Those Greeks and their olives. I know the Odyssey is not to be taken literally, but my family used to have an olive tree in our front yard and you would not believe the mess it made. Presuming Ulysses and Penny had post-business-trip sex when he finally stumbled back into Ithaca (drunk as usual), I'm sure there was olive muck all over them by the end.
As for the poem itself, I dearly hope that this was written for a high school assignment. Because if it isn't, Melissa loves "The Odyssey" way too much. Someone should either lock her in a room with nothing but Dean Koontz and John Grisham books, for a year. She'll be either insane or "cured" by the end of the 365 days. Unless she's going for her professorship on Ancient Greek poetry, it seems to me that her fandom would be better spent on "Heroes" slash fiction between Mohinder and Matt -- especially if we judge her fandom on the quality of this poem. Really, "unseal my eyes"? I think Melissa is saying that Penelope is tearing her eyes away from her fruitless search of the horizon, but I smell an abused thesaurus. It smells of mortality. "Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth." - Death's conquests? Are the old ladies spreading unfair rumors about death? Isn't it a big leap of faith to assume that the old ladies of Ithaca had teeth? "While you sail, sail to women who love you hard." Ooh, no she didn't! "Honey, I promise I didn't touch the sirens! I swear! Demodocus wanted me to, but I said, 'hey, man, I love Penelope! I can't do that to her' Honey? I brought you something from Troy. ... It's right here in my ... Crap, I think we must have tossed it at the Cyclops."
Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: D+
