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I did some unintended research, the kind in which one interesting thing leads to another, which leads to Chuck D. The sequence was as follows: 1. Found at a thrift shop: Greek Lyric Poetry, translated by Willis Barnstone. (Bantam Books, 1962).  2) I flipped to the Hellenistic era poets in this anthology, since I've incidentally been reading Plutarch's Hellenistic Lives. 3) There I randomly turned to Kallimachos or Callimachus. He was a poet and scholar who critiqued long-form verse, and wrote among other things epyllia, or miniature epics. “The sweet myrtle of Kallimachos said the Stephanos of Meleagros. (Willis Barnstone, translator, doesn’t identify 'the Stephanos of Meleagros' after this comment. Perhaps he’s referring to Stephanus Grammaticus, who was included in a much older anthology, the Greek Anthology.) Anyway, what caught my eye was: 4) this idea of the epyllion, or mini-epic—a tempting project. Though mini, the form still employs epic meter, or 5) dactylic hexameter (A line of 6 dactlys. In English, this sounds like “higgeldy piggeldy,” times 6). Along with Kallimachos and epyllion, I reviewed dactylic hexameter in Wikpedia, and in a rather Wikipedia-esque way, that entry doesn't fail to mention: 6) the classic rap song, "Bring the Noise"—a recent example of lyrics spoken in epic meter. Thus, six steps to Public Enemy’s ‘harsh honey:’ Postscript: Writing Prompt
Write an epyllion, no matter how short, whether using dactylic hexameter lines or not. It could narrate a protest, perhaps, involving honey.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins and Marcel Duchamp, back to back (Hopkins first). These two don't usually invite comparison, but the similarities (and differences) in these sets of notes and sketches are intriguing: Just caught sight of a little whirlwind which ran very fast careening across our pond. It was made by conspiring catspaws seeming to be caught in, in a whorl, to the centre. There were of course two motions, the traveling and the rotation…Each tail of the catspaw seemed to fling itself alive into its place in turn, so that something like the scale A B C D was very rapidly repeated all around the ring…there was something eery, Circe-like and quick about it”  Figure 1, above: Catspaws' tails. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 2, below: Parasol sieves  As in a Derby, the spangles pass through the parasols A, C D.EF…B. and as they gradually arrive at D, E, F,…etc. they are straightened out i.e. they loose their sense of up and down ([more precise term]).—The group of these parasols forms a sort of labyrinth of the 3 directions.-- The overall schema could be a document from a fictional world—a world in which critical inquiry is the mysterious object, and art the helpmate and authority. Where Art tumbles Circe-stunned Letters in "conspiring catspaws..." Sources:
House, Humphrey, ed. The Journals and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford University Press, London, 1959. Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer, eds., The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp, Thames and Hudson, Ltd., London, 1975. |
Susan ParrCorrespondences, incidentals, hypotheticals, visuals. I also hike. Archives
June 2025
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