Thursday, February 10, 2005

 
Re Pickles on NRO: scrapping the bottom of the briney barrel for these posts of Sept 23, 2003:

Pickled Poetry
Or: The Dills of Arcady?
Or: Of Keats & Claussen?
Or: Son of a Cucumber?

Few may care about the pickle preferences of Andrew Stuttaford(See "Pickled Cucumbers" on the Corner) or
Stephen "Piccadilly" Pollard, but the lowly vegetable(or is it a fruit?)
deserves an honorable mention for its role as a prop in "Animal House"("Mine's bigger")and in "Spinal Tap"("I have a cucumber[or was it a zucchini?] in my pants!")
Bayard Taylor's parody of Keats has its moments even for us devotees of doggerel, and we reject any assertion that he wrote it out of regrets about being some fermented child of acetic acid and slow thyme or that he had his "salad days" when he was, er, Grecian in judgment.
(NTTIAWWT!)


Ode on a Jar of Pickles
by Bayard Taylor
From "The Brand-X Anthology of Poetry" by William Zaranka, Editor

I
A sweet, acidulous, down-reaching thrill
Pervades my sense. I seem to see or hear
The lushy garden-grounds of Greenwhich Hill.
In autumn, where the crispy leaves are sere;
And odors haunt me of remotest spice
From the Levant or msuky-aired Cathay,
Or from the saffron-fields of Jericho,
Where everything is nice.
The more I sniff, the more I swoon away,
And what else mortal palate craves, forego.
II
Odors unsmelled are keen, but those I smell
Are keener; wherefore let me snifff again!
Enticing walnuts, I have known ye well
In youth, when pickles were a passing pain;
Unwitting youth, that craves the candy stem,
And sugar plums to olives doth prefer,
And even licks the pots of marmalade
When sweetness clings to them.
But now I dream of ambergis and myrrh,
Tasting those walnuts in the poplar shade.
III
Lo! hoarded coolness in the heart of noon,
Plucked with its dew, the cucumber is here,
As to the Dryad's parching lips a boon,
And crescent bean-pods, unto Bacchus dear;
And, last of all, the pepper's pungent globe,
The scarlet dwelling of the sylph of fire,
Provoking purple draughts, and, surfeited,
I cast my trailing robe
O'ver my pale feet, touch up my tuneless lyre,
And twist the Delphic wreath to suit my head.
IV
Here shall my tongue in otherwise be soured
Than fretful men's in parched and palsied days;
And, by the mid-May's dusky leaves embowered,
Forgeet the fruitful blame, the scanty praise.
No sweets to them who sweet themselves were born,
Whose natures ooze with lucent saccharine;
Who, with sad repetition soothly cloyed,
The lemon-tinted moren
Enjoy, and find acetic twilight fine.
Wake I, or sleep? The pickle jar is void.