While Poets Walked, Swine Flew
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Pig: • noun 1. a domesticated mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout, kept for its meat. 2. a wild animal related to the domestic pig. 3. informal a greedy, dirty, or unpleasant person. 4. informal, derogatory a police officer. 5. an oblong mass of iron or lead from a smelting furnace.
–Concise Oxford English Dictionary
Pigs have acquired an unenviable reputation. Their name is synonymous with greed, lust, filth and disease. Jews and Muslims abominate them as an article of faith and the rest of us aren’t terribly keen.
But it wasn’t always thus:
The Pig was held sacred by the ancient Cretans, because Jupiter was suckled by a sow; it was immolated in the mysteries of Eleusis; was sacrificed to Hercules, to Venus, the Lares, and all those who sought relief from bodily ailments. –Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 1894 Edition
And so we come to our friend Alarming’s (and The Whalley Range All Stars’) Giant Inflatable Electric Euro Pig:
Politely Homicidal is going to break with tradition and encourage you to swinishness (I can hear some mutters of “…I thought swinishness was Politely Homicidal tradition” but I’m going to ignore the nameless malcontent [Mowbray]). Get your trotters in the trough and root out some verses in honour of Alarming’s splendid Euro Pig.
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politelyhomicidal.wordpress.com 
Consider yourself our pig.
Consider yourself one of the family.
I’d do anything for you, pig. Anything.
Yes I’d do anything. Anything for you.
Feed the pigs, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.
Food, glorious food.
Hot sausage and mustard.
“swine flew” – ace pun.
When we took our pig to the Taipei Arts Festival in 2004 they constructed a bamboo temple especially for it to lie in. They even made up a story for its presence in a city square – it was a gift for the people and when it left after 2 weeks of shows it would become food for everyone. What struck me was how even in a mythological/narrative setting the pig eventually suffered the fate of all pigs and got turned into food.
We try to like the lowly pig
The Vietnamese pot-belly is infra-dig
We kid ourselves about pig charms
Imagine them away from farms
Although they feature in children’s books
We gaze on them with hungry looks
Pig’s futures don’t stretch that far
Food on a plate is what they are.
Once upon a midnight boring, my friends my phonecalls were ignoring
To favourite book, Bravo Two Zero, I turned as I’d turned before
As I daydreamed, blandly reeling to the tale McNab was dealing
Came outside an angry squealing, squealing at my bedsit door
‘Must be someone wanting money, dealing at my bedsit door –
Just some kids. No, nothing more.’
‘Twas the year that I turned thirty: office job, thoughts turning dirty
From Bravo I had hoped to wrest some peace from mem’ries of before:
Happy with a girl in Ealing, IT job and Artex ceiling
Ruined by accident revealing, during a spring clean my store
My whole cache of arthouse films on VCR, my secret store
Did she find, did she deplore.
As I turned back to my reading, hopeful of the sound receding
Heard I then a snuffling scratching, padding on my chamber floor
I leapt behind the sofa, peeking, predatory footsteps creaking
As if some foul beast was seeking, seeking to do worse and more
Seeking out my heart and kidneys, my liver my iPhone and more
To settle some forgotten score
Then I Heard the TV crashing, sound of teeth ungently gnashing
And shrieked most unrestrainedly, imagining myself as gore
Over the sofa came a-snorting, like a cannon-shot retorting
Or a demon come a ‘courting, amorously to adore
Reared a fat black pig out of the dark, no hinting of amour
I fainted, there was nothing more.
When I awoke the pig was sitting, through McNab most idly flitting
Snorting with amusement and contempt not usual in a boar
Then he set to grimly chewing every page, the words eschewing
I shouted ‘what you think you’re doing? That’s my book and there’s a law
‘Gainst lit’rary theft, also ingestion’, but he seemed to fear no law
He picked his teeth and nothing more
As I stood amazed and swaying, wishing I’d spent more time praying
As my swinish guest proceeded to eat a book shelf’s worth or more
His tiny eyes suggested thinking, his breath that he had been drinking
Something from the cupboard where I kept my Aldi vodka store
I retreated to the kitchen, where indeed I saw my store
Empty bottles, nothing more.
‘Your drinks cabinet needs stocking,’ laughed the swine, his voice so mocking
That I scarcely noticed he’d not spoke a human word before
‘Let’s get out, this flat’s depressing. But I don’t like how you’re dressing
Put a shirt on, stop obsessing, let’s to the West End and score
You’re okay, mate, I don’t judge a man alone upon the score
Of tailoring and nothing more.’
Too stunned I was to start complaining, that it was too late, and raining
That I’d never, ever been out late on Thursday night before
Instead I ran and started changing, all events my mind deranging
I descended, that estranging pig a-standing in the door
Rolling up my welcome mat to smoke it, standing in the door
Just the mat, and nothing more
In the bus seat he sat flopping, his enormous gut near-stopping
Anyone from passing to escape his perfume, rank and raw
Half the top deck fell a-choking from the mat he still was smoking
As he laughed and, crudely joking, lobbed things at the folding door
‘Til all old ladies and be-hooded youths were out the folding door
Me and the pig, and nothing more.
He took me to a club, Smooth Porking, said ‘keep quiet, I’ll do the talking
I know the swine who runs this little place, he’ll let me in full-sure’.
With a twenty slyly palming, in the doorman’s hand, disarming
All his qualities uncharming, got us through Smooth Porking’s maw
To a room where nubile, sequined ladies boogied midst the maw
Of men, one pig and nothing more.
What came next is fast retreating, garish, zany, shameful, fleeting
All I know is that my NatWest card will never pay out more
I recall, stood in the drizzle, piggy with his corkscrew pizzle
Causing the tarmac to sizzle, then we did through Soho soar
Like a balding input clerk and giant pig, we both did soar
Laughing, roaring, nothing more.
I awoke, my tongue dry-throbbing, cigar butts in the toilet bobbing
And my skull resounding with the echoes of our happy war
Though my sight was blurred and stippling, and the carpet felt a-rippling
I saw books, from Proust to Kipling, stacked in piles of three or four
Dickens, Melville, Rabelais and Poe in piles of three or four
Just the books and nothing more.
Desperately I searched my dwelling, first by sight and then by smelling
Smelling for the mighty stinking musk of my new friend the boar
But the swine had gone, departed to another life unstarted
Someone who just sat and farted, farted watching Channel Four
I picked up the nearest volume, turned the page and closed the door
Just the book and nothing more
Edward Al Alarming Taylor
Had a pig and tried to tame her
puffed with air and unreal hopes
She’d strain against retaining ropes
In warmer climes she’d safely lie
and proffer a nipple to passers-by
but breezier climes would stir her up
and skywards find her eyes cast up.
Then one day, in wild Montana
a youth strolled by, armed with spanner
and seeing a look for freedom yearning
set about its shackles turning,
loos’ning nuts to just a quarter
turn that next great gust would slaughter.
So when Al returned from Rodeo town,
moorings only, were all he found.
But way up Yonder across the plains
a pig flew laughing, dangling chains
“Thought you’d make me dance to your tune?
Well I’m less pig now, than pink balloon.”
And that was the last seen of that sow,
heading toward the moon right now
but legend says, on a quiet night
big piglet footballs fall from a height.
So the moral of this ditty,
all said with the best of manners,
is keep your blow-up pigs
tied down
and don’t trust boys with spanners.
Impressive stuff from ExitB and Pinkroom. Alas, pressure of work is going to keep me from my planned Ode to an Inflatable Pig for a few days, but here’s a bit of porcine doggerel in the meantime:
I like a little Tamworth pig
I like his pointy snout
I like his little trotters
As he scampers all about
I like his wiry ginger coat
And sharp attentive eye
He is as good a hairy pig
As you could hope to buy.
He doesn’t lounge about all day
And wallow in the mire
He’s on the go from morn till night
And never seems to tire
He doesn’t plod like other pigs
He’s more what you’d call a dasher
And when his time comes, in the end
He makes a lovely rasher.
Hm, I seem to be channelling Pam Ayres, better get back to the work I think…
This little piggy went to County Clare
This little piggy went to Spain
This little piggy flew on Ryan Air
This little piggy took a train
And this little piggy was held by customs officials when 50,000 ecstasy tablets were discovered in his abdomen.
I get the feeling HLM has watched Oliver! recently. All good stuff, although XB’s ‘Pig Meets Poe’ epic forces me to come up with an epic of my own…sigh…a doggerelist’s work is never done.
I discovered a photo of a Hungarian woolly pig in an airline glossy magazine recently – a truly disturbing creature. Possibly the ideal image to accompany XB’s splendid sinister pig poem. Will email it over.
Speaking of sinister and disturbing, I see Roger Moore has been roped into doing adverts for the Post Office.
The ads are rather chilling. He always looked like a fucking waxwork but he now looks like a waxwork that’s been left out in the sun for too long. He’s accompanied by two leggy lovelies, doubtless a tip of the hat to his legendary lady-killing powers.
Sadly, they appear to be the only things that are keeping the poor old sod upright. They look like they’re taking an ailing relative for a walk.
I think the most pitiful bit is when the female Post Office workers plead with Rog to make with the eye-brow (throughout his career, his sole concession to facial movement). The camera zooms in on a wrinkly, hairless area in the region of his forehead which he somehow contrives to wrinkle even more. Cue PO females swooning (poor desperate creatures).
The whole thing made me feel quite ill.
@Al
The pig sounds perfect. My inspiration was an entity I saw at a childrens’ farm in Amsterdam. It was mostly goats but there were a few pigs (one of my favourite animals). One of them was simply enormous, black, so fat that its forhead overhung its face then rounded upwards to become its back. Its belly literally dragged across the ground as it walked. It was a giant black pudding on tiny legs. truly awesome.
I never liked Roger Moore but then I never liked James Bond either. I always assumed I did, because he was a hero and everyone else liked him. It was a few years before I noticed that I’d always wandered off to do something else before the (usually at xmas) film was finished. Monstrously-dull, lad-pleasing product placement for the most part. imho
Sadly, XB, the films were a pitiful travesty of the books, which I loved as a teenager. I think they were the first novels I ever read where the hero (and I mean ‘hero’ not protagonist) was completely amoral–no excuses, no rationalising (aside from a brief nod to the ‘Queen and country’ blather)…it was so refreshing.
Al has sent me a very disturbing pig foto. At first, I though it was a joke, like those postcards of the ‘Jackalope’ etc, or the amusing hybrid beasts on Zeph’s blog but no, it’s the real thing. I looked it up. Yeuccchh..
Roger Moore is a natural source for Botox isn’t he? Don’t they drain him yearly to top up the shelves?
Now it’s safe I will come out and add my name to the anti-James Bond faction here. I watched Casino Royale recently – the beginning had taken its cue from the Indiana Jones style of blockbusters but the ending – a game of cards which you already knew Bond would win – was tedious.
We made the pig to solve a particular theatrical problem not because we are pig fans. But in touring it we have met some real pig obesssives including a very worrying man in Namur in Belgium who had photos of pigs in his wallet and who donned a pig snout before he stuck his head inside the pig. I’m all for eccentric individualists but he was intense in a bad way.
There is also a pig festival in the French part of the Pyrenees where men win prizes for the best impersonations of pigs. There are different categories too – pigs in heat, pigs suckling their young etc. etc. I think it’s all a pretext for getting extremely drunk but I’ve seen photos of men wearing pig nipple vests. I’ve not been and to be honest am not sure I want to go either but never rulke anything out is always a useful motto ( or is it? )
Never RULE anything out is also a useful motto.
I jsut did a Flikr search to find a picture of the type of pig that’s in my poem, not that revolting hairy thing. And it gave me this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21204781@N07/3669557494/
XB The caption should read “Pig at nauseating middle-class festival for children.” I didn’t do that gig but those who did came back spitting feathers about it.
Hi everyone
Not a swish, unfortunately, but something I penned in anticipation of the pig theme just a day or two ago. I’m away from home at present so will log in again when I get the space….
Somewhere in the Pig
Dragged up the cold metal fire-escape steps
the pig struggled in my uncles’ grip, squealed
its heart out and unhinged the thick black gate
of the clouds until they pissed down buckets
of sharp rain. In a narrow room above
the drenched creamery yard the pig was tied
to a long table. Flat on its back, tied
by each foot to a table-corner, steps
would now be impossible. High above,
a naked bulb scorched flies as the pig squealed
through its gash of a mouth. Mum brought buckets
for catching the blood, dull like the grey gate
in the yard and clanking the way the gate
knocked back against its bar. Everything tied
together in my mind, gates and buckets
like the clockwork innards that drove the steps
of my toy robot. The metal key squealed
as I wound him up, the bare bulb above
my head swinging in the warm draught above
us all. The robot’s chest, square as a gate,
flashed cog-grinding sparks, and the pig squealed, squealed
as uncle Jack cut its throat. Sprayed blood tied
us all together like puppets, our steps
predetermined as the robot’s. Buckets
were filled to the brim with warm blood, buckets
were filled with coils of steaming gut. Above
all death my toy robot took clanking steps
beneath the feet of my mother. A gate
had opened somewhere in the pig, untied
by my uncle Jack. Suddenly I squealed,
for mum had blood up to her elbows, squealed
because mum was rummaging out buckets
of pig innards, was pulling out the tied
lights of the pig’s carcass. Swinging above
us was the bare bulb, a pendulum gate
that pulled our shadows and coerced our steps
against the white-washed walls. I squealed above
the din of filling buckets as a gate
beckoned, tied me to predetermined steps.
Jack Brae Curtingstall
Frank Hampson, illustrator of children’s books
had a strong sense of how a pig looks
and in the second book, of Ladybird rhymes
he painted the scene of Little Tom’s crimes.
Yes Little Tom, the Piper’s son
who stole him a pig, and way he ran
Stout of thigh and rosy of cheek
with a pig under arm, chased through a street
of vaguely Teutonic clour and shape
through which Tom tried, to make escape
but the pig was eat, and Tom was beat
and they whipped the boy for porking meat
The image of pig remained
impressed
until reading the Opies’
reassessed
this notion of boy and pig entwined
in symbiotic rosy, swineishness.
A pig it would seem
was not what it meaned
but a kind of pasty
instead
so I had to redraw
the pig in his paw
now pastry
in my
head.
Great stuff, Jack, PR. Still tinkering with my porcine epic.
Very impressive, Jack! I tried a sestina and couldn’t make it say anything at all, yours is a really good subject for the somewhat obsessive effect of the form.
Hooray, I got 100 recommendations for a comment on GU.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/oct/05/sir-alex-ferguson-referees-alan-wiley
The secret is, to get in early.
All this talk of politicians: – I so rarely listen to the news, but I had BBC News on today waiting for the Booker result, and almost ever other minute found myself having to reach for the mute button before I became irrationally angry. It’s a mystery to me why people ever listen to politicians who say nothing more all the time than four-legs good two-legs bad (to keep on the porcine theme).
What were the Opies on about? Clear case of pig-stealing, the lad should have been horsewhipped, harrumph.
Oh, that’s right, he was.
The pig so pink,so plump, so sweet
Is there any of it that we don’t eat?
In Taiwan deep fried pig arseholes
Will test the nerve of dainty souls.
Pig ears brazed upon a grill
Can make a gourmet distinctly ill.
In Segovia tourists just for kicks
Take photos of the piglet’s pricks
Stacked up high in butcher’s shops
Like Segovian gastronomic outcrops.
In Wolverhampton with their tipples
They like a bag of deep-fried nipples.
Jellied pig’s head? German cordon bleu
I wouldn’t eat it – would you?
The recipe’s a poem by Gunter Grass
But he might as well have been cooking the pig’s bloody arse.
Cooking these bits seems a very odd vice
Why can’t they cook the bits that are nice?
You’re not wrong, obookie…get in early and say something reflective of public opinion. I got over 500 recommends a couple of months ago (as bottlerocket, I think).
Apparently lots of people agreed with me that Gordon Brown is 10 lbs of shit in a 5lb bag and this government are irredeemable scum. Who could have guessed?
You’re right, Zeph..it’s not the form of the sestina that’s the real challenge, it’s expressing something coherent with it that’s the killer…
All true, Al. You know the old Spanish saying? “The only part of the pig you can’t eat is the oink.”
“The only part of the pig you can’t eat is the oink.”
Not sure about that. I bit into a particularly cheap Mercadona chorizo the other day and I’m sure I heard something.
Re: CiF I get the impression that by the end of the second page of comments people are more interested in arguing with each other than reading anything new or indeed even reading the blog itself. Can’t blame them as it’s extremely wearing wading through metres of other people’s thoughts so the advice to get in early is sound advice.
If you are late in response I think you need a visual trick to draw attention to what you’ve written. There was a poster who managed to make his/her lines stretch right across the comment box. Couldn’t miss seeing it – that plus h/she had a bit of wit on show once you delayed scrolling to read.
I was never a prolific CiF poster but I don’t even think to go there, now. The music pages used to be fun, but its the same group of people always there and whilst some of them were great (train-spotting, roleplaying, prog-champion Kalyr and OCD Amazon reviewer and general grouch Jasonaparkes are my favourites). But on GU I know exactly what music the regulars like, other than the ‘the band you like’s shit…band I like rocks, dude’ crowd. So, discussions are predictable.
I think there could have been a few more interesting music/lit crossover discussions beyond the ‘would shakespeare have been a rapper?’ nonsense. But they were always sabotaged.
And the books blogs seem to topple into off-the-point pedantry so fast that I’m not sure people read the original post any more. And when you do read it, you wish you hadn’t. I pity some of the writers, pressurised by the need for hit rates to say something witlessly divisive.
XB In the spirit of jasonaparkes I have a list of comments which were made before you made your comment and which prove that you are unoriginal. I hate the canon of work that mainstream rock journalists always bow down to and I once saw Julian Cope in a teriyaki chill-out bar in Smethwick. In my rush to kiss the hem of his Siberian biker’s fur gilet ( a look influenced by Jean Seberg in Godard’s seminal Le Jour avant le Weekend ) I dropped my folder of lists proving that the Beatles copied Mark E Smith and by the time I had put them in the correct chronological order Julian had left to go shopping in Lidl. I had a list of 10 supermarkets that were more original than Lidl ( cont. page 94 )
Is he still posting comments? A man whose comments were often longer than Des Swords. No mean achievement.
Fantastic, al. lol, as Wittgenstein was known to do.
I’m friends with JAP on Facebook, where he regularly updates with books, reviews, etc. His tastes are, as you’ve noted, obsessive, but I like his crankiness and share his fondness for Julian Cope (a rare thing these days as Julian-H gives up his pop sensibility for ever-less ambiguous agit-prop harrangues).
I think JAP has phases regarding where he posts. He has several thousand reviews on Amazon (literally) but gave that up and now links through FB to another review site(the name of which I can’t remember).
Lest you Dream of Giant Pigs
The Ghost Sow settled
her massive weight down
on the roughly nettled
far edge of the town;
all of the sleeping
(the young and the old)
left sleep’s safe-keeping,
and went out in the cold;
queued by the dozen,
to suckle that sow,
and all got frozen
so they’re all dead now.
Jack Brae Curtingstall
Ladbrokes has some marvellous things to bet on, for instance:
I think ‘Hard Working Families’ is worth £100 at 3/1, ditto ‘Broken Britain’. ‘Bercow’ is a quite fanciable long-shot at that price…I mean, surely he’s just as likely to mention Bercow as ‘Boris’ (1/2)?
Are you a member of Betfair, obooki? I have accounts with William Hill, Paddy Power and Victor Chandler but I find I use Betfair most of time.
Generally speaking, you get better odds because you’re not betting against a bookie but against other punters; Betfair make their money by charging a small handling fee for every transaction. Plus you can ‘lay’ bets which you can’t do with any of the on-line bookies…
My other half has just subscribed to Sofa Cinema where they send you DVD’s, you watch them and then send them back ( or move house, don’t leave a forwarding address and keep them. ) We’ve watched a Herzog documentary, David Lynch’s short films and Festen with Franju’s Judex ( a lovely film , part The Avengers/ part Max Ernst ) and “the Devil’s Backbone” on their way.
Curiously the researchers at Sofa cinema have analysed the choices she’s made and recommended Spiderman 3 and The Bourne Supremacy as the next films to watch. Are they suggesting her choices are too leftfield and need balancing out with a bit of Hollywood or are researchers not really what they are cracked up to be?
Jesus…I suppose you should be grateful they didn’t recommend Home Alone III, Debbie Does Dallas and a Steven Seagal Triple Feature…
No, I’ve signed up to most bookies in my time, but never BetFair. You can “lay” odds as well?! – I look at their webpage and understand nothing.
Yes, it almost seems worth a blanket bet on everything in Cameron’s speech (or is it just 5 minutes long?).
Now I am back to my old addiction of poker-playing on Victor Chandler.
I borrowed a Czech film called Marketa Lazarova out of my library today (they are going through a Czech period at the moment, last week I got out a Jiri Menzel film, and the week before another Czech film – I forget what). It says on the back it’s the greatest Czech film ever.
Ha, good job I folded. I’d have had a straight against a full house. How wise I am!
I can’t really see Pie Face mentioning Bullingdon or Eton. From now until the election, he’s in ‘Man Of The People’ mode.
Most amusing listening to Boy George use the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ about a hundred times.
Are we, George? Even you, with your £30 million inherited wallpaper fortune and your baronetcy? Perhaps not ‘all’, eh?
Cameron is Blair without the substance isn’t he? And when you consider that Blair had no substance.
Hmm, not following the news I didn’t know about this fellow Bercow. I thought the point was to find someone whiter than white to take over the speaker’s role, not the person who’d claimed the most money on expenses over the last five years. (Unless Wiki lies to me).
In today’s Indy:
I live for headlines like this.
DVDs arrived yesterday, thanks. Should have responded sooner but I’ve been fighting off a hefty cold, or possibly swine flu, for the last few days. Anyway, despite my suffering I’ve managed to hawk this up:
Pinky and Perky
I saw them twice back in the day,
and though their stuff was super-sleek,
it wasn’t just that they could play,
my God, those guys could really squeak.
From I Want To Hold Your Trotter
up to The Long And Curly Tail
they just got better and better,
no-one imagined they could fail.
Cherchez la sow, the cliché goes,
it was like turning on a switch
when Perky saw her turned-up nose
and fell for that pot-bellied bitch.
In a flash the hit machine died,
Perky went mushy and sincere,
Pinky’s brain got totally fried:
the final cut was a right pig’s ear.
Well-slaughtered by the NME,
Parsons said it was utter swill,
dint bring home the bacon for me,
squeaked Somerset’s Julie Burchill.
That was when Perky left the band,
(though Pinky claimed he left it first)
whatevs, their solo stuff got panned
and no-one cared whose dung stunk worst.
Perky moved to the USA,
looking for that elusive break,
until, one Independence Day,
he was barbecued by mistake.
Pinky too is thought to be dead,
last seen hog drunk round Leicester way,
his finely-chopped body, it’s said,
is somewhere in Melton Mowbray.
..
Some good stuff up there. Particularly admire Jack’s piece.
Touring is a swine
The Ancient mariner only had an albatross around his neck
Hindering movement on the deck.
Sisyphus comes across as a bit of a phone
He moans incessantly about pushing a stone.
Well excuse me if I find these complaints boring
They’re as nothing when compared to the business of touring.
Google maps will put your rational mind in a haze
As tortuous as any mythological maze.
Motorway services lure you with promises of treats
Even Sirens would flee from their culinary feats.
When you’re done driving the Travelodge at night
Offers you relaxation on a building site.
On site the allocated area is far too small
The mobile number given is the wrong call.
The request for someone to help unload
Presumably screwed up on the side of the road.
The audience may show up it has been hinted
Even though the publicity has yet to be printed
My self-pitying, priviliged moans may make you queasy
But Scott of the Antarctic had it too easy.
If that’s Hadrian’s Wall freep’s dogg is standing on he’s a big bastard.
What? Has someone stolen my dogg? Where is he?
Wish I could think of a pig poem. Some subjects are just too big, like al’s mighty being that succours all who see it.
Couldn’t even get inspiration out of the OED, but note that there is a collective noun – a ‘sounder’ of swine – that I wasn’t aware of.
A Parson Russell dogge, freep?
Indeed, hlm, a Parson. You obviously know your dogs. He is hairier than the average. What puzzles me is that I still see ‘photo waiting approval’ on Guardian books (‘your favourite poem’). He is standing on a wall in Galloway.
I see your dogge on GU, freep. First spotted him this afternoon, in fact. A short-haired, brindle and white Jack Russell-ish beast, right? Standing on a wall? I dunno why you can’t see it. Try clearing your browser’s cache. HLM looks like he was thrown out of Jethro Tull for over-consumption of psychedelics…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077621/
Dude stole my name…
Pig or Person? Quiz Confusion.
“Porky Pig was a pig what stuttered…”
A chappie in my local muttered,
“…Elmer Fudd was a fackin hunter;
a human being… you fackin munter.”
HLM Ah yes Goin’ South where Jack Nicholson appears to have a cold throughout the film even though I’m not sure it’s possible to catch a cold in Mexico. The extent of his “cold” depends of course on how much cocaine he’s sniffed just before the shot.
Have never understood the claims made for John Belushi either. He makes Abbott & Costello look subtle.
Pigs are surprisingly hard to write about. There are all those puns and double entendres which I started off resolving to avoid. Then the absence of material revealed itself and I found I had to bung them all in anyway. Strange, since it seems such a potentially rich subject.
True Blood on C4 was pretty good. Don’t watch it with the kids, though.
Belushi was actually rather good when he was cast against type and played it straight in Neighbours. Mind you, I think that was the only time he was cast against type..
Just back again from a few days of travelling and teaching, my brain totally addled. Like MM I’m coming down with the sniffles. I’m beggining to suspect that one of our pig poems must be a carrier!
I see some mention above of Freep’s dogg, so I will go out onto the GU in a moment with the hope that I might spot it..
Jack Brae
Just been on the GU poetry workshop, where I see that the selections have recently been posted. My poem wasn’t selected, so here it is anyway. (Not a pig in sight.)
*********
Through Time and Space with E. E. “Doc” Smith
I never cared for a single word you wrote
but often picked your books from off the shelf;
I’d weigh them in my hand, peruse the blurb,
but never brought one nearer to the till.
Grease from my fingers, the arched secrets
of my prints, remained within the pages.
W. H. Smith sold my finger-smudges
with every book I left behind. The covers
made you out to be a PhD. Physics
is what most people guessed. But actually
you were a chemist, and specialised
in the doughnut mix for an American
food conglomerate. Your characters
travelled space, cut it in two as if
light was a knife through time. The truth is
it is. Space, as you knew, was the expanding
bulk of an uncooked doughnut, proving
in the baker’s bucket. In the oven
doughnuts gain eternal thought,
galaxies of sugar emerging in hot jam.
Though never lauded as a literary master
your work was devoured in more ways than one.
And somewhere, perhaps still, there’s a part of me,
immortal in a way, my fingers in your pie.
Jack Brae Curtingstall
Guy Ritchie AKA Mr. Madonna has become my new benchmark for fuck-wittery…read this elegant evisceration by Marina Hyde to see why.
To quote the man himself: “You can tell a lot by a person’s marmalade. My palate is really a fine shred, it’s accessible. I’m not saying I won’t test you. Because all marmalade tests you.”
He makes Madonna look like fucking Simone de Beauvoir…hail, Guy–King Of Clucks…
Rough night? Mrs M has rusticated me to the spare room on account of my incessant coughing. The last owner of the house died in there according to a doctor who came round once. A cheering thought.
I’ve never understood the Dylan Thomas HLM selects on Favourite Poems. If the night’s good why wouldn’t you want to go into it? There’s not much point in raging either, since you’re fucked anyway.
yeh same MM, I’m a bit porked when it comes to writing about inflatable pigs. Al, have you/will you/does funding allow you to stage your show in Sydney? *Licks pencil in readiness for diary entry*
Anyway – here’s a poem that feels like it should be about pigs from Donald Justice – ‘Counting the Mad!’:
This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,
This one was given bread and meat
But would eat none,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.
This one looked at the window
As though it were a wall,
This one saw things that were not there,
This one things that were,
And this one cried No No No No
All Day long.
This one thought himself
a bird,
This one a dog.
And this one thought himself a man’
An ordinary
And cried and cried No No No No
All day long.
********
So, whaddaya reckon? personally I don’t care for it – but as a poem it’s highly rated.
According to Justice’s Norton Anthology bio (1925 – i.e still alive) ‘his teachers included the poets John Berryman, Robert Lowell and Karl Shapiro … often compared to Wallace Stevens* in his purity of phrasing’
*oh fuck off – this is crap next to Stevens
Melton – are you messing about? Or what? Don’t even think about heading gently into that good night because I’ll fucking reclaim the night for you – for another not quite perfect day*
* huge ensemble – sorry about the bono shoo-in – fuck, he’s everywhere :(
I dunno, MM. I’ve always rather liked that Thomas poem and it’s a good villanelle. And I can sort of see the point he’s making…”go down fighting”…that sort of thing (I think) and I think he’s using ‘good night’ in the sense of ‘fare thee well’ not in the sense of ‘it’s bloody marvellous out there, boyo, look you’..anyway, I’ve always had a soft spot for the old Welsh windbag. His Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog was a favourite of my teens. I used to drink in The White Horse Tavern in the West Village, where Thomas drank his last fatal whiskeys.
That Justice poem..it’s a re-working of ‘This Litle Piggy Went To Market’, no? I think I’ve read a couple of Justice poems that I liked but set next to Wallace Stevens? No, no, no…Stevens urinates on the majority of 20th century poets from a commanding height..
para, the pig has been to Perth but as it’s a show for small audiences ( 10 people per show for 14 X 10 minute long shows per day ) the costs of freight, flying 3 people over etc. put off most festivals.
Yes – Justice’s poem was inspired by the nursery rhyme ‘This little pig etc’
I chose it because I didn’t have a pig verse of my own to offer. Perhaps not the best example of Justice’s work (I was ham strung by the topic) – (and yes, I think the anthologists were stretching it a bit when they offer Wallace Stevens as a comparison) however, Donald Justice writes a fair couple of opening verses – and then spoils it with a need to deliver – so, if you’re not bothered by denouement, here’s the first two stanzas of another DJ poem:
Men at Forty
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
*******
I won’t post the rest – it’s all downhill from here :)
Hi, MM. Kudos on the best pig poem, too.
My take on the Dylan poem is that it is a valedictory shot in the arm, totally convincing to neither the speaker nor the listener, hence the poignant ambiguity.
Given the choice, I’d rather have morphine, personally.
Obama’s Nobel win: my thoughts end up crashing into a big wall of WHAT???
This must be a weird portent of something…
I can’t help wondering if they would have given the Nobel to McCain if he’d said and done exactly the same things that Obama has. I imagine not. The uncomfortable truth is, he’s getting it for being black or rather (because lots of people are black) for being black and getting elected President of the United States.
After all, what exactly has Obama accomplished so far? Bailed out the bankers? check…and..erm..that’s it. The other day he refused to meet the Dalai Llama for fear of offending the Chinese. Of course, the US doesn’t owe the Dalai Llama $1 trillion…so much for Obama’s much-vaunted ‘principles’.
Of course, I mocked all this Obama hype here on PH back in Jan or Feb so none of this actually surprises me. I wish I’d been wrong but I wasn’t.
Chillax, parallax, I’m not dying, though I wouldn’t have minded handing in the dinner pail earlier in the week. Not that impressed by the first Justice poem, though the second looks more promising. Funnily enough, Stevens had a bit of a thing about men in their 40s, didn’t he? If men at forty will be painting lakes… I’m sure it crops up elsewhere.
I’ve reread DNGGITGN a few times, HLM, and I see your point – the curse/bless thing had escaped my notice – but I still find the whole thing too windy and imprecise.
I’ve never been a Thomas fan, though I did spend a pissed weekend in Laugharne in the mid-70s, viewing the Boathouse while my female companion was sick in the bushes, then the Shed, which was quite disappointing since it was literally just that, with an empty beer bottle standing on the table in front of the window. I suppose it’s been flashed up a bit since.
Oh, yes…there’s a full beer bottle, now…
An unaccompanied bottle of beer wouldn’t last long in Wales. It feels a bit odd writing it, but I wouldn’t mind being 40 again. Not 20, though.
I’d love to be 20 again but only providing I knew what I know now. I mean…I wouldn’t just want a fucking re-run. Not that it wasn’t a lot fun but it almost killed me the first time…
Apparently, someone shot Liz Jones’ letter-box:
I’m the same way. I have my butler, Cringe, hoover the garden every day–twice a day in autumn.
The locals sound like Mowbray. Oh, I know that’s not his neck of the woods but, still…whenever I hear the name ‘Mowbray’, spectral Deliverance-like banjo music starts playing and my sphinctre tightens…
BTW…what the hell is an ‘equine podiatrist’? Is that what we used to call ‘a blacksmith’?
A hilarious tale on so many levels. Here in Gasworks Green, we urban fringers tend to have an equal distain for the effete metropolitan and the hideous rustic, so this is a win/win all the way. Here’s a pig-themed sonnet – of sorts – in praise of their mutual discomfort.
Sow meets Swine
When city sow met local pigs,
dark they sproke, twixt cider swigs,
“Whome’s she thinks she is?” They grunted
into their tankards, black affronted,
“…Blowing in with fancy coffee,
townie manners and Thornton’s toffee.
What’s wrong with our Maxwell House
(cut with drops from local mouse)
and marked-up up Werthers, double-priced
from local folk (alive with lice)?”
She fancied herself a Flora Poste
to ‘tidy-up” was proud her boast
but Zummerzzet shit proved just too deep,
so, “Please take me home…”
she soon did weep.
Showing your Londoncentricity I’m afraid, HRH. I only have one head, whereas in deepest Devon two is the norm, with an uncertain number and variety of limbs. Moving further east conventional anatomy reasserts itself. It’s possible that those native to areas closer to Devon, such as Alarming, possess some of the attributes of those to the West, vestigial extra head, drooling etc. Examining photographs of him I don’t see any obvious add-ons, but loose clothing can conceal a lot.
Growing up in the West Country I profess wide-eyed amusement at the Countryside Alliance’s attempts to turn the countryside and its ways into something no townie could ever understand. Round my way the farmers far from being the unacknowledged custodians of the rural landscape were first in the queue to destroy hedgerows by using time-saving mechanical means, were the first to feed their animals cheap shit, were the first to poison the earth through effective but poisonous weedkillers, left illegal gin traps all over the place including in our garden without telling us and so on and so forth.
Liz Jones sounds a typical Daily Mail type to avoid at all costs but actually I’m with her on this although she did rather shoot herself in the foot by writing a column about it. My brother when he lived in a Buckinghamshire village was ostracised from the community because he wouldn’t allow a hunt to trample through his garden. Apparently it was “the done thing” for owners of the cottage to doff their caps to their elders and betters and allow them to wreck the place on a regular basis. An odious bunch who I guess we’ll soon have to re-acknowledge as our superiors when Dave gets in.
What purveyors of bucolic fantasies such as Charles Moore fail to acknowledge is that most people who live in the country have little or nothing to with ‘country life’ as it is sentimentally valorised in the Torygraph and Mail. Few people live on farms, even fewer hunt; most are teachers, cleaners, solicitors, builders, etc – they do the same jobs as urbanites, only in a different setting.
Or are underpaid farm-workers who are, post hunting ban , used as blackmail fodder by those who do hunt threatening to make them redundant because they can’t be bothered to think of the many other ways of using dogs and riding for fun that are possible.
I do think those who claim concern for foxes are a bit stoopid as more foxes are killed on the roads. Anti-hunting is a good, justified bit of class warfare against those who tell others what to do all the time and hate it when the tables are turned.
MM you’ve been “examining” photos of me? Shudders.
As for Obama’s Nobel Prize, Glen Greenwald had this to say at salon.com:
Mind you, it’s not as sickening as awarding it to an out-and-out war criminal like Kissinger and it could have been worse…they could have given it to Blair.
ODE upon the Giant Pig lately Exhibited by Mr Alarming to Much Acclaim
Pig! That hast with thy giant Frame
Astonished Continents and spread the Fame
Of all the boldest Stars of Whalley Range,
Pig that hast gladden’d Park, Square, Hall and Grange
With thy pink Presence, think me not too bold
If I should sing thy Praises, now as th’ Cold
Of Autumn spreads across the Hemisphere
And Plans begin to form for Winter Cheer.
A Summer Pig thou, that on the Green
Did spread thy Girth and form a striking Scene.
A Pig of Outings and Theatric Fun,
A Pig of Ice-Cream and of Currant Bun,
A porcine Sight whose gigantesque Appeal
Let many a Child first meet with the Surreal.
But as the Season now brings Mud and Sleet
The People have no Stomach for a Treat
That’s not accomplished near a roaring Fire.
Therefore, great Pig, must thou a while retire
And spare the All-Stars from the tedious Round
Of chilly Tours from Ground to muddy Ground.
And while thou restest, fresh from thy Success,
Lean on thy Laurels, preen o’er thy Prowess,
While we at Home can blithely sit and talk
Of Yuletide Feasts with genuine Roast Pork.
Hm, tweak, – Mishari, please could you change line 16 to:
The People have no Stomach for a Treat
Ta.
[Done -Ed.]
In awe of poets writing pig inspired poetry. Love yours zeph, esp. the title – I’m currently working on colonial poetry published in regional newspapers pre 1850s and some of the titles are as long as the poems. Here for example from 1834 :
‘Lines written on the night of Christmas Day, 1833, on spending the night amongst Cannibals and Heathens, and still more barbarous Englishmen in Cloudy Bay, New Zealand, with an Anthem on the occasion’
Agree with para…great work, Zeph and everyone but as MM said earlier, pigs are surprisingly uninspiring (not that it stopped him, the flash bastard). I’m still tinkering with mine and am growing to hate it more every day..
Perhaps I’ll pinch para’s wonderful title and write that one instead…or take Graham Parker’s advice:
Al, you olde moderno flautisto de Hamelin, you. Next work: an enormous prostrate Trojan Obama?
Parallax, thanks – I always think it’s a shame that we didn’t keep the Custom of using Capital Letters for Nouns in English, as they still do in German. It’s a great help for an Ode.
StevenA next week an inflatable David Cameron which has built in vents so that once puffed up it will then deflate very quickly.
I would like to make an Obama automata in a glass case that only does something after you’ve inserted an award ( no! not there but might be a possibility ).
And many thanks Zeph for the ode.
Examining is probably the mot juste. The telephotos were not as clear as I’d hoped, so I had to use a magnifying glass. Your shower could use some regrouting.
MM so it’s you that’s been making the noise in the septic tank all week
I loved your ode, Zeph; it had the true Wordsworthian feel to it. Swine-bashing in Grasmere could not have been more beautifully done.
Thank you, freep. I seem to remember you did a very fine Wordsworthian piece Addressing a Spade once on Poster Poems… inspirational (ie that’s probably where I nicked the idea from).
At least my beloved Wallace Stevens managed a pig poem:
Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.
It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,
That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder’s rattapallax,
That the man who erected this cabin, planted
This field, and tended it awhile,
Knew not the quirks of imagery,
That the hours of his indolent, arid days,
Grotesque with this nosing in banks,
This somnolence and rattapallax,
Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,
As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.
rattapallax – what a word.
Kick-ass post, good looking weblog, added it to my favs!!