Jabberwocky

O frabjous day!

Hello Friends,

Those of you who have been on this poem-a-day list for a few years can probably already guess that today I am challenging you to read “Jabberwocky” out loud to someone you know.

Making up words is something poetry and queerness have in common, two of my great interests. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, it’s Humpty Dumpty who says (in a rather scornful tone), “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” I love that line — but Carroll also makes a point of humorously showing us that Humpty Dumpty’s conversations don’t go very well when he assumes that meaning is 100% created by the speaker (which Humpty Dumpty does when he is the speaker), nor when he assumes meaning is 100% created by the listener (which Humpty Dumpty does when he is the listener).

One of the things I love about “Jabberwocky” is that Carroll forces you to acknowledge the role of the reader, and not just the writer, in constructing the meaning of a poem — not just this poem but any poem. Carroll draws particular attention to the reader’s participation by using words for which we as readers must invent our own pronunciations and meanings — but even in other poems, where the words are not made up, we as readers are still applying our own meanings, in a sense creating our own translations, for the words on the page.

<3 Ellen

Jabberwocky

‘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.

■

If you’re feeling brave, also try one of these translations of Jabberwocky — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon — compiled many years ago by Keith Lim.

“Jabberwocky” has also been featured in several previous poem-a-days.

Poem-A-Day April 23: Since it’s his birthday…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

■

Hello Friends —

Happy Bard Day! April 23 is celebrated as the birthday of William Shakespeare. The Bard was supposedly born on this day in 1564 and also supposedly died on the exact same day 52 years later, April 23, 1616. The monologue above is from Act V, scene 5 of Macbeth, when Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s death.

Ever wonder how Shakespeare was able to stay in perfect iambic pentameter so much of the time? Well, it certainly didn’t hurt that he made up over 1,700 of the words he used — often taking known words and twisting them into new parts of speech; noun into verb, verb into adjective, etc. — so that they fit into his syllabic structure. In addition to individual words, Shakespeare also coined many phrases we still use today.

Other literary works that derive their titles from just this one Shakespeare passage include “Out, Out —” by Robert Frost and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.

Whether it’s today’s selection or “Jabberwocky” (those of you who have been on this list a few years!) or another piece that speaks to you, I strongly encourage you to pick a poem to read out loud to someone else, at least once a year, and consider learning it by heart. When you’ve memorized a poem, no one can ever take it away from you. Even locked in a dark cell. Or stranded on a deserted island. Or in the last syllable of recorded time.

Memorization is why we invented rhyme and meter and poetry itself in the first place! So an orator could travel from place to place and recite a piece, or one generation could pass on a story to the text. The first poems were never written down; they were all oral and committed to memory, aided by patterns in rhythm and sound we now call poetry. That memorization skill is a bit of a lost art — but I still think one of the most poetic things you can do is to memorize a poem.

Shakespeare indicates in many places he understands the power of words to outlive their authors. While his character Macbeth says in this passage “and then is heard no more,” it’s possible or even likely Shakespeare dreamed and aspired toward a world in which these very words were heard over and over again, even after his own death. You could argue Shakespeare believed the opposite of what this, one of his most famous passages, actually says. This passage may be more about conveying thoughts and feelings that many people have experienced, about how existence feels sometimes — rather than making fundamental claims about the nature of existence. Did Shakespeare in his wildest dreams ever imagine his words would last 450 years, or that they would be performed every single day, not only in England but around the world? Probably not. But here we are.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this poem-a-day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like poem-a-day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

‘Twas brillig

Hello Friends,


Today I am attending a Watershed Company reunion of sorts, and because of that, today's poem-a-day can only be "Jabberwocky" — which I used to make my co-workers recite once a year during poetry month.
One of the things I love about "Jabberwocky" is that Carroll forces you to acknowledge the role of the reader, and not just the writer, in constructing the meaning of a poem — any poem. Carroll draws particular attention to the reader's participation by using words for which we as readers must invent our own pronunciations and meanings — but even in other poems, where the words are not made up, we as readers are still applying our own meanings, in a sense creating our own translations, for the words on the page.
So be creative and brave today! I challenge you to read "Jabberwocky" out loud to someone you know. And if you're feeling really brave, try one of the translations of Jabberwocky — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon — compiled by Keith Lim.
Enjoy.

Ellen


Jabberwocky
'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.
■

Poem-a-Day April 2: Train Tracks

Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change
is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.

Hello Friends,

It’s a nearly universal experience to read or hear the same words over again, and have them mean something different to us, isn’t it? How human of us!

Something we didn’t touch directly on with yesterday’s “Vocabulary” poem is how the meaning of even a single word changes over time and in different contexts — context in sentence, in a room, in the mouth of a particular speaker, in the walls of the brain it reverberates in. You could make an argument that a word signifies something slightly different every single time it’s used — as Humpty Dumpty* argues in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass when he says (in a rather scornful tone), “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Today’s poem, from the Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye in her 1995 collection Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, is in part about how much of a poem’s, a word’s, a sound’s, a train’s meaning — at the very least half — belongs to the listener, the reader, the audience.

You know that saying about the tree falling in the woods, whether it makes a sound or not if nobody hears it? Is it any less mysterious when the tree falls and people do hear the sound — how much the tree determines what the sound it makes sounds like, and how much the people listening determine that sound? And how much something so much bigger.

You think about that tree, or the train whistle, and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you got the meaning of a poem “wrong,” ok? It’s entirely possible for a poem to mean something to you that the poet never intended — you could argue it’s not only possible, but inevitable. But that doesn’t make the meaning you read wrong; it just makes it yours.

For what Edna St. Vincent Millay hears in the train whistle, see “Traveling.” And for another take on what doesn’t change when stars explode, see Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Shampoo.”

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating with my own eclectic selection of 30 poems by 30 poets, and some of what they mean to me. Thank you again for letting me share this month with you.

— Ellen

* This is the same Humpty Dumpty who, when Alice asks him, “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem ‘Jabberwocky’?”, replies, “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” One of the amusing things about Humpty Dumpty’s character is that when he’s the speaker, he attributes 100% of the control over language’s meaning to the speaker (or writer). But when Humpty Dumpty is the listener, he attributes 100% of the control over language’s meaning to the listener (or reader).

Poem-a-Day April 24: O frabjous day!

O Frabjous Day, Friends!

As many of you know, I am of the opinion that the poem “Jabberwocky” ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year. Today my former co-workers sent me a video of themselves doing just that — thank you, Watershed; I’m really touched (miss you all! ::sniff::). There is even a Watershed custom board game featuring “Jabberwocky!”

You too can experience the Calloohity for yourselves: I challenge you to read “Jabberwocky” aloud to someone else today.

If you shy away from this challenge because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

With every poem, a reader in a sense chooses what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean. Reading “Jabberwocky,” especially out loud, simply requires you to make your choices of meaning more conscious acts. Reading aloud is a form of translation — you are translating the written “Jabberwocky” into a spoken “Jabberwocky.” Keith Lim has also compiled a lovely collection of translations of “Jabberwocky” — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon.

Callay!
Ellen

Jabberwocky

‘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.

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2010 and Poem-a-Day April 8, 2007 — and for a Watershed Tues@2 staff meeting every April since the company’s founding in 2007.

Poem-a-Day, April 19: ‘Twas brillig

Hi Friends,

It’s that time of year again! As many of you know, I am of the opinion that the poem “Jabberwocky” ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year — you can think of this practice as akin to the Queen’s practice of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast each morning. And, look! It’s even trendy this year — Johnny Depp is doing it. I was quite delighted to find that Tim Burton had done what I would do if I were to make a movie about Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872) — which is to make the entire movie about the poem “Jabberwocky.”

So, kids, it’s time to channel your inner Mad Hatter: I challenge you to read “Jabberwocky” aloud to someone else today. If you shy away from this challenge because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” With every poem, a reader in a sense chooses what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean. Reading “Jabberwocky,” especially out loud, simply requires you to make your choices of meaning more conscious acts. You could think of reading aloud as in a sense a minor form of translation — you are translating the written “Jabberwocky” into oral English. (Keith Lim has also compiled a lovely collection of translations of “Jabberwocky” — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon.)

And, finally, a bonus poetrivia challenge for you — and there’s a prize! The scene where the Mad Hatter recites “Jabberwocky” in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is cut such that he skips which line(s) of the first two quatrains? First correct answer I receive, judged by email time stamp, will be awarded poetry in a can!, courtesy of Frankenmart.

Best,
Ellen

Jabberwocky

‘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.

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 8, 2007.

Poem-a-Day, April 23: Since it’s his birthday…

Hello Friends —

Happy Bard Day! April 23 is celebrated as the supposed birthday of William Shakespeare. The Bard was born in 1564 and also supposedly died on the exact same day 52 years later, April 23, 1616. The monologue above is from Act V, scene 5 of Macbeth, when Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s death. As with “Jabberwocky,” I strongly encourage you to read today’s selection out loud to someone else, at least once a year.

Ever wonder how Shakespeare was able to stay in perfect iambic pentameter so much of the time? Well, it certainly didn’t hurt that he made up many of the words he used — often taking a known word and twisting it into a new part of speech; noun into verb, verb into adjective, etc. — so that they just happen to fit perfectly into his syllabic structure. Here’s a fun list of words that have their earliest usage credited to Shakespeare in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Further reading: Of the dozens of literary works deriving their titles from this ironically immortal Macbeth passage, two particularly worth reading are “Out, Out —” by Robert Frost; and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (but not unless you’ve read something else by Faulkner first — As I Lay Dying is a good place to start if you’re a Faulkner virgin — otherwise, you’ll never get past the first sentence of The Sound and the Fury).

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” by William Shakespeare was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2009.
Poems by William Shakespeare were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 23, 2011.

Poem-a-Day, April 12: mud-luscious & puddle-wonderful

if i have made,my lady,intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body’s whitest song
upon my mind — if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy — if through my singing slips
the very skilful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

— let the world say, “his most wise music stole
nothing from death” —
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul

*

Hello Friends —

Of all the famous occurrences of “April” in poetry (see also Chaucer, Eliot), this untitled E.E. Cummings poem is my favorite. Oh, and the jabberwockean words in subject line of this email come from another of cumming’s great seasonal works, “in Just- / spring.”

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“if i have made,my lady,intricate” by E.E. Cummings was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 13, 2009 and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2011.
Poems by E.E. Cummings were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 13, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 20, 2010.

Poem-a-Day, April 8: Down the rabbit hole

Jabberwocky

‘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.

Hello Friends —

Why would I send you a poem that every last one of you is already familiar with? Because some poems ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year — You can think of this practice as akin to the Queen’s practice of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast each morning. I challenge you to read this poem ALOUD to someone else today.

Have you ever thought about what it would mean to translate “Jabberwocky” into another language? Keith Lim has compiled a wonderful collection of “Jabberwocky” translations online. If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don’t know how to pronounce half of the words, you can also find Carroll’s own pronunciation guide reproduced on Keith’s site (under “Explanations”). If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty (who can explain all the poems that ever were invented — and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet): “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” In order to read “Jabberwocky” aloud, you simply have to make choosing what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean a more conscious act.

Today’s poem, “Jabberwocky,” from Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), is dedicated in loving memory to Edgar Lewis (yes, named for Poe and Carroll) — a giant pet white rabbit who hopped freely around on our front lawn for a decade’s worth of easters, entertaining countless neighboring children who finally got to meet the real easter bunny.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

P.S. Frabjous Birthday, Jane Nevins!

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2010.