1 hour ago
good morning,
I am not I'm afraid a writer of poetry, unless you count the drivel I wrote to my girlfriend when I was a love-struck teenager, but I am a reader of poetry and I am researching a book on poetry in film. I have just come across a reference in a film to a poem that possibly exists but confirming the details of the poem, or even its author, is proving problematic and I was hoping that someone here might be able to help.
the film is Band รก part (1964) by Jean-Luc Godard. the film is set in Paris, and an early scene is set in an English class where the teacher explains that they will be using classical teaching methods which means that "it is not necessary to learn A Room With a Bath but it is necessary to spell Thomas Hardy correctly," at which point she turns round and writes Thomas Hardy on the blackboard.
A Room With a Bath is an obvious reference to a poem the students do not need to learn. Google search seems to think A Room With a Bath (ARWAB) is a humorous poem and has offered me both A.P. Herbert and Ogden Nash as possibilities for its author. the first time it said that A.P. Herbert was also a co-founder of the American Professional Golfers Association, which I took to be a pretty obvious AI hallucination. then it said the author was Ogden Nash with no further details, and on a third try it claimed that A.P. Herbert wrote it and it was first published in Punch in 1922 and then appeared in Mild and Bitter (1936).
the online Punch archive does not include ARWAB in any edition between 1910 when Herbert first started submitting verse to them and 1922 when the archive ends (there is no 1912 in the archive). copies of Mild and Bitter in the Internet Archive are covers only with no text inside so I have been unable to independently confirm any of these details.
I have obviously searched considerably further than the AI summary at the top, I have visited all my usual poetry haunts, but all I have for my trouble is a large number of poems about baths and bathing and poems set in Bath but no substantive evidence of for or about a poem called ARWAB.
does anyone here have anything to add?
many thanks,
Kaarlo Tuomi
I am not I'm afraid a writer of poetry, unless you count the drivel I wrote to my girlfriend when I was a love-struck teenager, but I am a reader of poetry and I am researching a book on poetry in film. I have just come across a reference in a film to a poem that possibly exists but confirming the details of the poem, or even its author, is proving problematic and I was hoping that someone here might be able to help.
the film is Band รก part (1964) by Jean-Luc Godard. the film is set in Paris, and an early scene is set in an English class where the teacher explains that they will be using classical teaching methods which means that "it is not necessary to learn A Room With a Bath but it is necessary to spell Thomas Hardy correctly," at which point she turns round and writes Thomas Hardy on the blackboard.
A Room With a Bath is an obvious reference to a poem the students do not need to learn. Google search seems to think A Room With a Bath (ARWAB) is a humorous poem and has offered me both A.P. Herbert and Ogden Nash as possibilities for its author. the first time it said that A.P. Herbert was also a co-founder of the American Professional Golfers Association, which I took to be a pretty obvious AI hallucination. then it said the author was Ogden Nash with no further details, and on a third try it claimed that A.P. Herbert wrote it and it was first published in Punch in 1922 and then appeared in Mild and Bitter (1936).
the online Punch archive does not include ARWAB in any edition between 1910 when Herbert first started submitting verse to them and 1922 when the archive ends (there is no 1912 in the archive). copies of Mild and Bitter in the Internet Archive are covers only with no text inside so I have been unable to independently confirm any of these details.
I have obviously searched considerably further than the AI summary at the top, I have visited all my usual poetry haunts, but all I have for my trouble is a large number of poems about baths and bathing and poems set in Bath but no substantive evidence of for or about a poem called ARWAB.
does anyone here have anything to add?
many thanks,
Kaarlo Tuomi