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Lifted from an e-mail I sent to a friend earlier today:
Confession time: much of the time I think of myself in the appropriate meter and as Mrissahainen. As in:
Then the mighty Mrissahainen
Pixel-slaying Mrissahainen
Mighty-sinewed chemist's daughter
Got up from the sucking sofa
Made herself the magic tisane
Made a pot of useful tisane
Useful tisane made from ginger
So she would not puke her guts out
Keep the lunch of Mrissahainen!
I cannot explain why this helps. But upon reflection I think I don't have to explain why this helps.
What I did not say in that e-mail, that I probably should have because my friend would also have gotten it, is that ever since I watched Desk Set lo these many years ago, I hear my bits of dog-Kalevala in Katharine Hepburn's voice from when she was doing Longfellow at top speed. Which I also find comforting.
I should specify further that the sofa sucks energy rather than being a generally sucky sofa in the colloquial sense of bad or nasty. It is a very fine sofa and I am fond of it.
And pixel-slaying Mrissahainen is one of my whatchems, you know, the thingers that they always call you while they're thinking up the thing to say in the next line. Wily Odysseus. Cognomen? That might not be quite it, because what I'm thinking of is like cognomen but for fitting in the line of poetry, and I don't know if there's a separate word for that.
Confession time: much of the time I think of myself in the appropriate meter and as Mrissahainen. As in:
Then the mighty Mrissahainen
Pixel-slaying Mrissahainen
Mighty-sinewed chemist's daughter
Got up from the sucking sofa
Made herself the magic tisane
Made a pot of useful tisane
Useful tisane made from ginger
So she would not puke her guts out
Keep the lunch of Mrissahainen!
I cannot explain why this helps. But upon reflection I think I don't have to explain why this helps.
What I did not say in that e-mail, that I probably should have because my friend would also have gotten it, is that ever since I watched Desk Set lo these many years ago, I hear my bits of dog-Kalevala in Katharine Hepburn's voice from when she was doing Longfellow at top speed. Which I also find comforting.
I should specify further that the sofa sucks energy rather than being a generally sucky sofa in the colloquial sense of bad or nasty. It is a very fine sofa and I am fond of it.
And pixel-slaying Mrissahainen is one of my whatchems, you know, the thingers that they always call you while they're thinking up the thing to say in the next line. Wily Odysseus. Cognomen? That might not be quite it, because what I'm thinking of is like cognomen but for fitting in the line of poetry, and I don't know if there's a separate word for that.
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Date: 2010-06-10 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 11:02 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2010-06-10 10:15 pm (UTC)[Edited to close the damn quotes already]
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Date: 2010-06-10 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 12:24 am (UTC)But I digress. When one of my linguistics classes looked at this kind of placeholder in oral communication (epics, auctions, racehorse commentary, etc) we just called them formulae. But 'epithets' seems to be the more technical term in poetry (see a typically magpie-like Wikipedia article).
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Date: 2010-06-10 10:23 pm (UTC)Thanks for the rhyme and I hope you feel better.
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Date: 2010-06-11 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 11:03 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2010-06-10 10:42 pm (UTC)maybe i should read it again.
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Date: 2010-06-11 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 08:04 am (UTC)If there's another word for it, I bet it's near the beginning of Lewis's INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST.
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Date: 2010-06-11 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 03:49 am (UTC)I like 'Mighty-sinewed chemist's daughter' myself, though I suspect that's not a kenning because it's, y'know. A description, not a euphemism. (Also everything from 'useful tisane made from ginger' on is brilliant.)
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Date: 2010-06-11 03:52 am (UTC)Oh, wait, you used quotation marks appropriately there. Oops.
But you're entirely correct, it is not a kenning.
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Date: 2010-06-11 01:01 pm (UTC)I have always been glad to have a name that rhymes so well, with so many things.
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Date: 2010-06-11 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 03:57 pm (UTC)You know who else lives on the Mexican Avenue bus? Our Mr. Sumner.
Yup, time to go watch that. Definitely.
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Date: 2010-06-11 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 04:01 pm (UTC)I get irrationally pissed off that they call it The Twilight "Saga." Needs moar Vikings before it can be the Sparklingasögur.
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Date: 2010-06-11 04:02 pm (UTC)But not the saga of my front door.
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Date: 2010-06-11 11:04 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2010-06-11 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-13 08:11 pm (UTC)Now I need one of these in traditional sanskrit-poetry meter, so that I can get myself tea.
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Date: 2010-06-16 01:46 am (UTC)