a poem to find

[billy]

i got this email, can you lot help?
just a bit of fun

hello

This is Garth Matthews and I am member Garthm1949, having joined today.

My main reason for joining is that I am very interested in locating a humorous, probably Victorian/Edwardian poem about a village parson . One of the things that comes to mind is that the poor parson's washing was offered for sale at the village jumble sale.

I should very much like to find and read this poem again , as it was read out by my grandmother , to much amusement , during World war 2.

If you or any other members could help me in my quest, I should be extremely grateful.
If you cannot help me directly and if you think I would be best, posting to a particular forum, perhaps you could give me your recommendation

Many thanks
With Best Regards

[rayheinrich]

i got this email, can you lot help?
just a bit of fun

While I'd usually ironisize this type of request, its considerable details command my respect.

BUT: "My main reason for joining" rubbed most of my cats the wrong way. When my cats get
rubbed the wrong way... NOBODY'S happy. While I'd never suggest in any way (not even the
slightest twitch of a way) that this woefully confused (to the point of patheticity) abysmal
swamp writer should be terminated with extreme prejudice; still, the thought has occurred.

[Erthona]

Actually I have read this "poem" or something similar, however that was at least 35 years ago. The only other thing I can remember is that I was also reading Chaucer at the time. As I have not found a need to read Chaucer in whole since that time I have no way of knowing if it is from Chaucer or if they are just linked together in my mind by time. I doubt there was a semester that went by I was not taking at least two literature classes at the same time and so it could have possibly been from a different class, but such a story fits Chaucer more than it does a Victorian piece. As Edward VII only was King for about 10 years, or even if one wishes to extend to WWI, the period does not seem the time for such a story to occur. Considering its crudity and subject matter, it would suggest to me it was probably possibly during but more likely prior to the Elizabethan period, as it simply does not appear as a English Renaissance piece (although there are all kinds of qualifiers to that statement). The indigenous English people of the middle period were still closer to their Germanic roots than were the Norman French courts. The word parson sprang up in 1200 CE, which was of course not long after the Norman invasion and conquest. Regardless this would mean the more Germanic village priest, i.e., parson, would have been a common site well before Chaucer in the mid 1300's. It was also true that these men often had little training, could not actually read Latin, were functionally illiterate, and preformed the rites by rote, which is how they learned them. While often seen as well meaning, kind hearted and courageous, the parsons were also at times described as bumbling fools; so a good object on which to play a joke. Probably a verbal joke long before it was written down. This seemed to be the humor of the English lower class at least through Shakespeare's day, as he often wrote many things for the penny seats, which were jokes that would appeal to this type of humor.

So yeah, somewhere between Chaucer and Shakespeare...or not

dale          

[milo]

I do not know of that poem but it reminds me of another poem that I like quite a bit:

American Solitude

BY GRACE SCHULMAN
“The cure for loneliness is solitude.” 
—Marianne Moore

Hopper never painted this, but here   
on a snaky path his vision lingers:

three white tombs, robots with glassed-in faces   
and meters for eyes, grim mouths, flat noses,

lean forward on a platform, like strangers   
with identical frowns scanning a blur,

far off, that might be their train.
Gas tanks broken for decades face Parson’s

smithy, planked shut now. Both relics must stay.   
The pumps have roots in gas pools, and the smithy

stores memories of hammers forging scythes   
to cut spartina grass for dry salt hay.

The tanks have the remove of local clammers   
who sink buckets and stand, never in pairs,

but one and one and one, blank-eyed, alone,   
more serene than lonely. Today a woman

rakes in the shallows, then bends to receive   
last rays in shimmering water, her long shadow

knifing the bay. She slides into her truck
to watch the sky flame over sand flats, a hawk’s

wind arabesque, an island risen, brown   
Atlantis, at low tide; she probes the shoreline

and beyond grassy dunes for where the land   
might slope off into night. Hers is no common

emptiness, but a vaster silence filled   
with terns’ cries, an abundant solitude.

Nearby, the three dry gas pumps, worn   
survivors of clam-digging generations,

are luminous, and have an exile’s grandeur   
that says: In perfect solitude, there’s fire.

One day I approached the vessels
and wanted to drive on, the road ablaze

with dogwood in full bloom, but the contraptions   
outdazzled the road’s white, even outshone

a bleached shirt flapping alone
on a laundry line, arms pointed down.

High noon. Three urns, ironic in their outcast   
dignity—as though, like some pine chests,

they might be prized in disuse—cast rays,
spun leaf—covered numbers, clanked, then wheezed

and stopped again. Shadows cut the road   
before I drove off into the dark woods.

[billy]

thanks guys, i'm sure the person has left the building but thanks

[rayheinrich]

thanks guys, i'm sure the person has left the building but thanks

It's those what's in the building that we're talkin' to.