Aughtsense

Extra Pound taught me naught

But to laugh . . . at naughtsense.

Ultima Thula

Ultima Thula*

That ultra evil called Extra Pound
Swerved round about and down around
Ultima Thula,
Like a swirling hula,
Unblinking, this time around.

* The spelling and pronunciation are Ozarkian.

Nothing

Victimized

Extra Pound
today
has nothing
of worth
to say.

Extra Pound gets hounded . . .

Dogging his Steps

Full fully around, turned himself, Extra Pound,
And cursed that odd dog that so did him hound,
That had dogged
His mud-clogged
Feet for league after league without bound.

Overheard Religious Dialogue . . .

Person 1: "Jesus was then double-crossed by Judas."

Person 2: "Jesus wasn't double-crossed by anyone!"

Person 1: "Of course he was! By Judas!"

Person 2: "No! Only one cross was used!"

Extra Pound's Mornings

Can truth be told about a fictional character:

Extra Pound considered the New York Public Library's architecture especially
offensive and thus visited the architects almost every day to shout at them.

Tangled Up in Law

Tales of the Hue-man

He looked above,
He looked below,
He looked both
Here and there,
But could not
Find eternity
Up-tangled
In his hair.

In case anybody is curious about my 'versification' these days, I will answer that I'm merely practicing at poetry, testing sounds for rhyme or alliteration or consonance or whatever, so don't take these attempts at 'sounding' too seriously, for I'm merely at great depths of the deep, fighting against the giant squid.

Of all the hue and cry

Hue and Cry

Extra Pound released a sigh,
but kept the others closely nigh,
For use
When use-
ful is of all, of all a human cry.

Harold Bloom returns

Harold Bloom died Monday, at 89, still inveighing against his enemies:

[Those whom] he called the "School of Resentment" -- critics and scholars he had previously described, in a 1991 Paris Review interview, as "displaced social workers" and "a rabblement of lemmings." (Dwight Garner, "A literary colossus," NYT, October 17, 2019)

I especially like the "displaced social workers" -- for I've long longed for the right expression (I've used "sociologists"), so I'm glad someone has already been there, and left planted there a sign for the ill-adversed . . .

Post-Natal

Learning to Stand

Extra Pound looked about and around,
Fine-tuning his gimlet eye so sound
That Imagist,
Or Behaviorist,
Pound was there to stand his ground.

Post Title - Why?

Gnomic Monstrosity

Against the lowly Metro-Gnome
Ol' Extra Pound inveighed: "That 'dome'
Must go,
As I say so,
For never shall ever a hunchback call our own Cathedral home."

A Lighter Sense of Fun

Extra Pound Expounds Around

In the abstract, he wished to ex-pound
To all of those gathered around,
But in the tub did he wish to ex-sponge
All that grit, grease, grime, growth, and grunge,
'Cause he hated his voice for its sound.

Some Finer Things of Life

Pound Cake

Whence cometh the cake known as "pound" cake?
Why, one poundeth till it maketh joints ache!
But young Extra Pound
Loved that texture so sound
That each morn did his night fast thus break.

Sur Loin?

Decent Men

There was a young man called Sir Pound,
Who claimed to descend from Sir Frowned,
But it really don't matter,
He was mad as a hatter,
Except when he wasn't, the old hound.

Ungulates of the Arctic

Frosty Whether

"Perhaps," I mused, "it was my fate,
Born an arctic ungulate.
To tread on ice
Is cold, but nice,
And I think not to perish twice, at any rate."

Junk Yard

Junkyard for Spare Parts of Extra Pound Words:

Except: Extra Pound Age

Except: Expect Extra Poundage

Excerpt: Expert Poundage

Accept: Anything, it's a slow day . . .

Freedom!

Libertarian Player

With wild abandon bounded free,
The Extra Pound in liberty
Spun forth the shot we all call free,
Thrown through the hoop with liberty . . .

There's more to this versification than might be seen by those who already know too much about basketball.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

Extra Pound Around

There once was a cubical Pound
Whose rolling rolled smoother than sound,
And he rolled as he 'goed,'
Up the Ventura Road,
But that gator lizard never, ever found.

Not Quite a Limerick

Extra Pound Enters

Trousers he wore of billiard cloth green,
Coat so pink as nearly to scream,
Shirt of blood-blue, a hand-painted tie,
And a promise to meet in the Great Bye-and-Bye.

Professional Slip-Up

Clowning Around

Of moral essay versified,
I could almost take in stride
The Kipling point,
Which they'd anoint,
On which I'd slip before I died.

Milton’s Preconditions for Freedom

This 'essay' appeared recently in the Ewha Voice

Milton’s Preconditions for Freedom

Ewha Voice

Professor's Column

Horace Jeffery Hodges

I sometimes wonder if people still believe in free speech. It is often attacked these days as an unnecessary concession to political adversaries when one has power over them. Or such freedom is cynically defended when one is out of power. On the positive importance of free speech, I can do no better than borrow John Milton’s earnest defense of the preconditions to free expression in his essay Areopagitica, which presupposes a morally 'fallen' world in which good and evil are mixed and must be unmixed through experiencing both:

It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by evill. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdome can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure one.

Perhaps this Early Modern English passage requires 'translation' into Modern English:

It was from out of the skin of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil as twins clinging together leapt forth into the world. And perhaps this is that judgment that Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil. The state of humankind is now this: what wisdom can there be to choose, what restraint to maintain, without the knowledge of evil? He who can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, that one is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies forth to face her adversary, but slinks out of the hot, dusty race for which that immortal garland is run. Certainly, we bring not innocence into the world; rather, we bring much impurity. That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. The virtue that is therefore a mere youth in contemplating evil, and does not know the utmost that vice promises her followers, and rejects it, is only a blank virtue, not a pure virtue.

Milton borrows heavily from the Genesis temptation story to describe our existential circumstances in a post-Genesis world, where we come to know good by knowing evil. And this, says Milton, is our judgment. We judge and are judged by means of the same judgment: our own. Without freedom, we would be mere mechanisms. We ourselves do not esteem forced obedience: neither does God. Providence therefore left mankind free. Or so thinks Milton, and he has been very influential on this point.

If mankind has free will, but nobody has a monopoly on truth – and Milton affirms these – then one can reasonably infer that we should be free to act in accordance with political freedom: namely, to speak freely. Do we have this right? That is a topic for another essay.

Post-Postness

Nantucket

Is there really a place called Nantucket,
Where limericks go kick the bucket?
Or is it all tricks,
No permanent fix?
If only I . . . ah, just go f**k it.

Another Take - Yeah

Utopia Revisited

There was a young man going Nowhere
And going as fast as he dare,
But fuel-less is here now in Now Here
And stuck here now many a year,
While longing for home in Nowhere.

I do try to remember to tell any readers when I've reworked a poem. I've reworked this one above. I'm just not sure it's a limerick anymore.

Another Take . . . Nah

Utopia

There once was a man going Nowhere,
And going as fast as he dare,
But he fueled up in Now Here,
And there stayed year on year,
In longing so long as he dare!

This got jumbled with another limerick,  and I don't recall the original, so here above is what it's come up to as a result.

Time Flies

From Wikipedia, I see that the real Ezra Pound was not much different from his alter ego, Extra Pound.

On a fellowship at Penn in 1907, Ezra Pound attended lectures in the English Department, where he soon alienated Felix Schelling, the department head. He would wind an enormous tin watch very slowly while Schelling lectured on Shakespeare. Schelling told him that he was wasting everyone's time and did not renew the fellowship.

I thought that was a rather clever comeback by Schelling, that pun on wasted time, assuming the accuracy of the Wikipedia entry on Pound.

Again, Again

I had some second thoughts about the wording of this poem a couple of blogspots ago, so here's what I came up with for changes:

How I Began

I resolved by age thirty to know more
About poetry than Paul Elmer More!
Not only in English,
But in every Unglish,
I'd threaten to even the score.

The speaker, by the way, is "Extra Pound."

Dawn Dance

Little Bit Extra

There once was a man they called Extra
With a girl who sang next tra,
la, la, and they busked in the street,
Just to make their ends meet,
And maybe have a little bit Extra.

Beginnings, Beginnings

"How I Began"

I resolved that by thirty I'd know more
About poetry than did Paul Elmer More!
Not only in English,
But in every Unglish,
I'd threaten to even the score.

Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism, Post-Toasties...

Post-Postlimericks

Post this please, just not to anybody.
Post this please, just not to manybody.
Not to someone,
Nor to noneone.
Post this please, just not to nonebody.

Finally, a Blogpost Heading

Appearance as Being

Once was a man called "Confound-it,"
But his friends misheard this as "Khunt-Found-Tit,"
So they called him "Confusion"
To waylay some "fusion,"
But it all came to naught, God confound it!

Be careful not to step too far into the English Lounge . . .

Not a Limerick! Just some off-the-wall humor. The English Lounge in ECC B235 has this sign on the wall:

"Magazines and newspapers may be read only just inside the English Lounge."

Think about that for a while . . .