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Are Women People? is a book of poetry by Alice Duer Miller, published in 1915. Lili Loofbourow downloaded the book through Project Gutenberg and was delighted to find that it was a book of satirical suffragist poetry, and passed along several of the passages to us. Here is a excerpt from the poem called Women:
I went into a factory
to earn my daily bread:
Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.”
“I have no home,” I said.But when the men all marched to war,
they cried to wife and maid,
“Oh, never mind about the home,
but save the export trade.”For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,
But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,
There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,
It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.
Read the rest of it, and more poetry of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, at The Hairpin. Link -via Metafilter
What a fun idea! Neatoramanaut Anton Hecht shot this clever video where words are spelled with shoelaces:
This was made with dance students from Newcastle College and filmed in Central arcade in Newcastle Uk. The writting is a homage to [the poet Charles Bukowski] about how small things can cause us great harm. Thanks to Busker Bill who played behind us. The shoelace design was Mick Davies and Catherin Dufton helped put the moves together.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Anton!
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A year ago, we told you about artist John Morse and his Roadside Haiku project in Atlanta. Now his talents have been commissioned for traffic signs in New York City! The New York City Department of Transportation has installed a collection of curbside signs written in haiku along with graphics designed by John Morse. The seventeen-syllable poetry warns drivers, pedestrians, and bikers to watch for safety hazards. Some also have QR codes. See more of them at core77. Link -via Metafilter
by Meg Muckenhoupt, Lexington, Massachusetts, USA
Illustrations by Gavin Schnitzler, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
On a hot night in August, while strolling in Prague,
Horton the elephant peered through the fog
With his portable telescope tied on a string
He looked at the heavens and spotted… a thing!
So Horton stopped walking and stared at the spot.
“That’s funny,” thought Horton, “It was there, now it’s not.”
Then he saw it again! Just a faint bit of fuzz
He certainly thought it wasn’t there—but it was!
“I’ll name it!” said Horton, “But what is it? Where?”
He looked and he looked. He could see nothing there
But small speck of ice floating far past the air.
“I say!” murmured Horton. “Stuff my trunk in a sock!
I’ve spotted a terribly far-away rock!
So you know what I think? I think that there must
Be a splendid new name for this lump of star-dust.
Even though it is quite a diminutive size,
Too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes…
But it looks very spherical, round at the girth,
Just like the planets Mars, Venus, and Earth
I’ll just have to name it. Because, after all,
A planet’s a planet no matter how small.”
“Humpf!” humphed a voice. ‘Twas a sour old sloth
Who cleared his thick head with a very slow cough.
“Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin!
A planet that small? There never has been!”
The planets and that thing are just not the same!
They don’t occupy the same orbital plane!
That thing’s not a planet—not even a dwarf.
It’s an asteroid merely, for all that that’s worth.”
She ended the sentence at twenty past one,
Exactly five hours since she had begun.
But Horton was patient, and waited to say
Why he thought this very new planet should stay.
more …
Male and female fruit flies. Drawing by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff, in homage to T.H. Morgan.
This poem is reprinted from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
Another in an endless series of poems evolved from E.A. Poe’s original
by Jennifer Sosnowski
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
O’er the latest volume of some scientific lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping at my lab’ratory door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my office door;
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
Each lab’ratory member left some data on my door.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for my low grant score
For the lab that sought to study Docking Protein v-SNARE-4;
Penniless forevermore.
I felt I would remember later strange sounds from each incubator
Oh, they filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my office door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my office door.
This it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating, then, no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or madam, your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my lab’ratory door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you.” Here I opened wide the door—.
Darkness there, and nothing more
more …
Magnetic Poetry – $11.95
Do you long to create your own captivating poetry, but lack the energy to come up with your own witty words? You need a Magnetic Poetry set from the NeatoShop. These fantastic 200+ word magnet sets come up with all the right words for you. All you need to do is arrange the words into creative sentences. You can finally satisfy your ravenous craving for poetry without ever having to use your delicious brain.
Magnetic Poetry is available in the following hilarious sets:
Link | Be sure to check out the NeatoShop more Zombie fun!
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Filmmaker Tim Burton wrote a poem about his frequent casting choice Johnny Depp. He also illustrated it! Link
A roar of welkome through the welkin
Is certain proof you’ll find the Elk in;
But if you listen to the shell,
In which the Whelk is said to dwell,
And hear a roar, beyond a doubt
It indicates the Whelk is out.
The Octopus or Cuttle-fish!
I’m sure that none of us would wish
To have him scuttle ’round the house,
Like Puss, when she espies a mouse:
When you secure your house-hold pet,
Be very sure you do not get
The Octopus, or there may be
Domestic in-felis-ity.
Two selections from a collection of 50 in How to tell the Birds from the Flowers and other Wood-cuts: A Revised Manual of Flornithology for Beginners, by Robert Williams Wood, published in 1917 and now available fulltext at Project Gutenberg.
Via The Owl Hooteth. [n.b. - "welkin" is an archaic term for the sky]
In 1993, when he was 58 years old, John Basinger (JB) decided he would memorize the 10,565 line poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. By age 74, he could recite books one and two from memory. After seeing JB perform, psychologist John Seamon was fascinated and arranged to test the man’s memory.
Seamon and his team asked JB to take part in tests regarding the epic work where they cued him with two lines selected from anywhere in the poem and asked him to recall the following 10 lines. In one part they picked out lines as they went through the books in order, in another they just chose books at random.
He seemed to stumble on a couple of books when they were tackled sequentially, but generally his verbatim recall was generally above 90% and seemed more consistent when the books were picked out randomly. The team also video-taped one of his live performances and found his average accuracy was between 97% and 98%.
JB is no savant; his accomplishments apparently came from hard work and dedication to the task. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Geeks Are Sexy presents the ABCs of geekdom, illustrating each of the 26 letters with Creative Commons photography. And when you read them all together, they make a really geeky poem! Link
(image credits: a, Mild Mannered Photographer and b, jpstanley)
Poet Christian Bök plans to alter the DNA of a particular species of bacteria so that it reflects an encoded version of his poetry:
Canadian poet Christian Bök wants his work to live on after he’s gone. Like, billions of years after. He’s going to encode it directly into the DNA of the hardy bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans. If it works, his poem could outlast the human race. But it’s a tricky procedure, and Bök is doing what he can to make it even trickier. He wants to inject the DNA with a string of nucleotides that form a comprehensible poem, and he also wants the protein that the cell produces in response to form a second comprehensible poem.[...]
Bök will create a code that links letters of the alphabet with genetic nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, aka ACGT). Each triplet of nucleotides will correspond to a letter so that, say, ACT represents the letter a, AGT represents the letter b, and so on.
Link via Marginal Revolution | Image: US Department of Energy
The Chaos is a poem often used to demonstrate how difficult it is to pronounce words in English, as the spelling and pronunciation varies so. It was written by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, who first published it in 1909, then revised and lengthened it several times before his death in 1946. More lines were added posthumously. The Spelling Society published The Chaos in its entirety. Here are the first few (and the easiest) lines:
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
The poem is now 274 lines long, meant to be read out loud. How much of it can you manage before mispronouncing something? Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
I’ve started a new project on flickr called Limericks for Naughty Children. Here’s a sample, and here’s the full set. I’m having a bit too much fun making them.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Ape Lad.
Psst … need to break up with someone? Just because it’s emotionally gut-wrenching it doesnt’ mean that you can’t be creative.
Here’s a funny video clip about how to break up with someone … with poetry! Link
A palindrome is a word or a phrase which is the same when read from the start or the end, for example the word wow or racecar. Or how about the phrase; A Toyota’s a Toyota. where ever you start they are the same.
You would imagine a palindrome is pretty hard to think up, maybe the odd word could be easy enough, and with a bit of effort a phrase, well how about a 224 word poem? here’s
“Dammit I’m Mad”
by
Demetri Martin
Dammit I’m mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level “Mad Dog”.
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I’m a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I’m it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
“Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog”
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I’m mad.
I promise you, bar some punctuation, it reads the same forwards or backwards.
(image credit: Flickr user puja)
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
See also: A Day in Palindromia
In high school and college, I spent hours writing overwrought, angst-filled, free verse poetry. Now today’s spoiled and over-emotional teenagers can do the same thing, but with only a single mouseclick, thanks to the Adolescent Poetry Generator.
Here’s a sample:
i am over adam he is my
night he’s my world
and that made me cry, when i
take a drug u will surely stay
alive i log into my inbox, i’ve got
mail!! that’s
faster than any
other mail,including the snail.
gotta write bak to bak.. hi
bak,what’s up?
Link via The Corner
Tiny Poems is a blog about mini poetry written on a single sheet of sticky yellow Post-It Notes. Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest, and the cleverest poets are the briefest!
Like a madness,
it grips internals,
twitching,
flexing,
instincts correlate,
holding me here,
driving me closer to them.
Remember the zombie haiku post on Neatorama a while ago? Well, Ryan Mecum, author of Zombie Haiku (the book) wrote to us about his project of writing such haikus in the style of famous poets:
Zombie Haiku by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle
into that zombie plagued night.
And take the shotgun.Zombie Haiku by Walt Whitman
Every skin atom
form’d from this soil, this air,
tastes like chicken meat.Zombie Haiku by William Shakespeare
To bite through the skull
or beat it against the wall?
That is the question.
Soon after, real poets and writer joined in the fun:
Back to the buffet
for second helpings-
Care for a rump of infant?
- Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate and author of the lovely Ballistics: PoemsIf zombies smoked pot
maybe they would skip the brains
and settle for cake.
- Doug Benson, writer and comedian regularly seen on Best Week EverThe day I died you
tried to put a bullet in
my head. You missed. Lunch!
- David Wellington, author of the terrifying Monster Island trilogy
Link – Thanks Ryan!
(Photo: Zombie Walk San Francisco 2006, more at Laughing Squid)
