Cracked

With time a little short this week I was rushing through various websites trying to find an aspect of Cracked that would do the job. I was thinking of eggs, Agatha Christie, old china sets etc. I came across ‘kintsugi’ which is an embracing of the flawed or imperfect as in cracked vases.

kintsugi bowl

Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken. It can also be understood as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage.

Unfortunately, I haven’t got the time to go into this in a way to do it justice so I will have to leave it for another time, which has left me with Humpty Dumpty. 

The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797 with the lyrics:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

The tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.

The common text from 1882 is:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty makes an appearance in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871). There Alice remarks that Humpty is ‘exactly like an egg’, which Humpty finds to be ‘very provoking’. Which is why I’m using Humpty as if he did have a great fall then he would crack. Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. They then go on to discuss semantics and pragmatics when Humpty Dumpty says, ‘my name means the shape I am’.

Alice and Humpty Dumpty

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the seventeenth century, the term ‘humpty dumpty’ referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale. By 1785, the term became slang for a short, squat, clumsy person (or someone who had too much to drink and tumbled over).

There are also various theories of an original Humpty Dumpty. For instance, King Richard III depicted as hunchbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Another is that Humpty Dumpty was a ‘tortoise’ siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary-held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War.

Colchester tourist board stated that a cannon was used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Walls by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648. It was termed Humpty Dumpty. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty but ‘All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again’.

In science Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of ‘disorder’. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.

Humpty Dumpty's Song by Lewis Carroll

In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight.

In Spring, when woods are getting green,

I’ll try and tell you what I mean.

In Summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song.

In Autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.

I sent a message to the fish:
I told them “This is what I wish.”

The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes’ answer was
“We cannot do it, Sir, because-“

I sent to them again to say
“It will be better to obey.”

The fishes answered, with a grin,
“Why, what a temper you are in!”

I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then someone came to me and said
“The little fishes are in bed.”

I said to him, I said it plain,
“Then you must wake them up again.”

I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud:
He said “You needn’t shout so loud!”

And he was very proud and stiff:
He said “I’d go and wake them, if-“

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but-

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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History

My bookshelves groan with the evidence of a full and varied education in History and English Literature coupled with a love of reading.  Much of my free time lately has been spent delving into my fat, well-used volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.  This has been for research purposes and to help find inspiration for my guest blog. I thumbed my way through Othello, trying to make sense of the notes I’d pencilled in the margins.  Neat, perfectly formed tiny writing from years, nay, decades ago, using a sharp, probably 3H pencil,  page after page.  And my underlining of some text, that must have been significant at the time.  It is lost on me now and the only thing I remember is sniggering inwardly at Shakespeare’s use of the words ‘tupping’ and ‘tupped’. These farmyard words and their meanings are the ones that stick in my childish mind.

I confess, with head bowed in shame that I haven’t always got on with the work of Mr Shakespeare.  I struggled with Hamlet, couldn’t get to grips with Henry V and I’ll never believe that Richard III was the tyrant that Shakespeare made him out to be. This might sound like blasphemy to fans of The Bard and I apologise, for what do I know? I tried my best, backed up with a fair amount of ‘fudging’ and help from caring classmates.  Many years later, something came into my possession which made a world of difference … a boxed set of DVDs with Laurence Olivier playing the lead character in six Shakespeare plays.  His ‘Heathcliff’ had taken my breath away when I was eleven and ever since, I’d had a soft spot for him.

“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York…” There was Olivier as Richard III, spitting out the words with venomous, clipped delivery. He looked menacing as he stooped and limped, dark eyes glaring from a twisted face. The make-up department had excelled. I was smitten.I wanted to know the truth about Richard III. I didn’t want to believe he was a cruel, vindictive king who ordered the murder of his young nephews and had an incestuous relationship with his niece. Apart from genealogy facts and succession to the throne, his life seems shrouded in a mystery of contradictions. Written accounts by others bearing truth or fiction. Perhaps Shakespeare had it right all along and, was he given information from Elizabeth I or is that another rumour?Laurence Olivier’s acting brought Richard III and other difficult characters to life and helped me to find an acceptable level of understanding in the history plays. It won’t improve my grades, but it’s never too late to learn or improve. I think a visit to Leicester Cathedral is in order, to pay respect to an English king who set me on a knowledge seeking journey that hasn’t ended.

A short poem:

Warwickshire gentleman known as Will

Looking thoughtful with parchment and quill.

Filling the hours of endless days

Composing sonnets and writing plays.

Clever and witty, word after word

But what was his spin on Richard III?

Thank you for reading, Pamela Winning.

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Here Kitty, Kitty...

For me, the most wonderful thing about poetic form is the ability to abandon it.  To know that your words slip off the tongue but refuse to rhyme.  To know that they look like a poem on the page but that their metre is rebellious, out of sync.  To know that there's a thread tying the language together which doesn't have a name, which has been created specially for this poem, because it fits.  

Limericks work when you want to have fun with ideas:

There was an old woman whose cake

Was a hit at the Veganfest Bake

When they pressed for the key

To her sticky green treats

She revealed jars of 'jus de grass snake'.

Villanelles are inextricably linked to villains in my mind (due to an obvious lack of imagination).  The repetition is fab if you have a cracking line that you're really proud of and want to share again and again and again:

Richard III

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Numb, sobbing Liz disrupts conjecture’s thrust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Drunk Clarence sings of regal mutineers

Mad Margaret taints each act with bitter rust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Round bishop calls for berries, feigning cheer

A messy end awaits his fruitless lust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

York's setting sun yields to a frost-tipped spear

Brash, gnashing boar's impatient dash through dust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Brave Billie frames Dread Dickie; motives clear

Spiced nest retains wet seal for lack of trust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

No pony for the king who perseveres

Bloodline of John of Gaunt smeared with mistrust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

But these poems don't speak in the same way my free verse speaks.  They are tied down.  The ideas chase the shapes rather than the other way round.  Which is why I love to pervert form, to know it and then abandon it - with abandon:

Fat Cat Demands

Every day he must feast on the fishes, consume the cream,

or small corpses will be written on the doorstep:

a head, a limb

a baby, a foetus.

Veiled threats scribbled in net curtains with claws.

Damp stains in the corner that soap won’t shift.

pivotal puss

penned population

Selfish Kitty – too vital to die, too big to break:

Roll him down the steps of St Paul’s and he purrs,

The cat got the cream and came back for the herd.

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