Discussion Post
This week’s readings include “Jabberwocky” and “A NostyFright.”
Your original post is due Wednesday, 8/12 at 11:59 pm.
Your post should be a well-developed and supported paragraph which completely answers the given prompt.
Compare Carroll’s strategies for creating sound inJabberwockywith those used by Swenson inA Nosty Fright.Pay attention to connotative and denotative meanings of the words and how the poet plays with sound.
Jabberwocky
BY LEWIS CARROLL
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983) Swenson’s Nosty Fright.
The other day I put an e.e. cummings poem in the bookpuddle, as an example of
an ideogram, a poem that is meant to be seen moreso than read aloud.
Since that time I have come across a poem that utilizes very nearly the opposite idea. It
is a whimsical poem that seems to be written exclusively for the sake of the amusing
sounds it makes if read aloud. The poet is May Swenson, and her poem is entitled A
Nosty Fright. According to critic Harold Bloom, Swenson ranks with Marianne Moore
and Elizabeth Bishop as one of the three best women poets of the twentieth century.
She passed away in 1989.
The poem, its sounds are delicious. Reading it is a real hoot!
At just the right moments, Swenson has transposed letters to create amusing sounds
and wild, inventive wordplays. The result is, in my omble hupinion, shothing nort of
rilharious!
A Nosty Fright
The roldengod and the soneyhuckle,
the sack eyed blusan and the wistle theed
are all tangled with the oison pivy,
the fallen nine peedles and the wumbleteed.
A mipchunk caught in a wobceb tried
to hip and skide in a dandy sune
but a stobler put up a EEP KOFF sign.
Then the unfucky lellow met a phytoon
and was sept out to swea. He difted for drays
till a hassgropper flying happened to spot
the boolish feast all debraggled and wet,
covered with snears and tot.
Loonmight shone through the winey poods
where rushmooms grew among risted twoots.
Back blats flew betreen the twees
and orned howls hounded their soots.
A kumkpin stood with tooked creeth
on the sindow will of a house
where a icked wold itch lived all alone
except for her stoombrick, a mitten and a kouse.
Here we part, said the hassgropper.
Pere we hart, mipchunk, too.
They purried away on opposite haths,
both scared of some Bat! or Scoo!
October was ending on a nosty fright
with scroans and greeches and chanking clains,
with oblins and gelfs, coaths and urses,
skinning grulls and stoodblains.
Will it ever be morning, Nofember virst,
skue bly and the sanppy hun, our friend?
With light breaves of wall by the fayside?
I sope ho, so that this oem can pend.
— May Swenson —
