** Rosemary’s Baby **
Dear Rosemary, I think you’ve been had.
Moved into a place that was bad.
Going to have a baby.
Did you ever think maybe
He’d be a devil of a lad?
Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and About a Boy:
[spoiler]Rob Gordon was stuck in a groove,
When Laura announced she would move.
Plumbing his past, and jealousy
Led to a dawning “maturity”
Which the muso was hard-pressed to prove.
Will wallowed in his slacker’s freedom
To seduce women, and then leave 'em.
Then he hit on a ruse,
Where he would pitch woos,
So that single mums couldn’t resist him.[/spoiler]
The life of Sylvia Plath:
Sylvia Plath became quite the poetess,
'Though with depression she remained under duress.
Well, at least she wrote “Ariel,”
And married Ted, and all,
Before stopping short of Medea’s murderousness.
Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century:
The Sex Pistols were, yes, a punk band most rude.
But in cultural influences they were thoroughly stewed:
Like Dada and the Situationists.
But for this ex-grad student, it’s
Stunt scholarship for music so crude!
A foundling found Sophie quite weddable
So it was all the more regrettable
That through error and sin
He found himself in
A plot quite complex and Oedipal
Some kids who played games in Narnia
Got gradually balmier & balmier…
[sub]Okay, it’s not original. But this most excellent thread did remind me of it, being among my favorite literature.[/sub]
*The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Four kids into Narnia fell
And fell under the wicked queen’s spell
But Aslan the Lion,
Though suffering and dyin’,
Rose again, and it all ended well.
Continuing in the Narnia Chronicles with The Magician’s Nephew:
You can see some incredible things
With the use of some magical rings:
Quiet woods, evil queen,
Talking animals, e’en;
And He who creates worlds when he sings.
One for the geekiest of the geeks, based on RA Salvatore’s magnum opus:
That stupid dark elf tweaker Drizz’t,
a sword in each skinny drow fizz’t,
was, when 3E came out
made the model, no doubt,
for ranger PCs. God, I’m pizz’t!
Daniel
J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World
A young lad killed his Da with a spade,
And hid out in the west, quite afraid,
He was thought a big man,
For offing his clan,
But his 'oul boy wasn’t quite slayed.
A man was sent to the clink
Named Coffey, spelled not like the drink
He sent psychic tingles
And resurrected squashed Jingles
And took out Wild Bill that damned fink
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Gus and Call, storied Rangers of yore
Drove cattle to Montana and more.
Weakness, Call won’t admit,
Gus talked, and cows shit –
Why’d they do it? The love of a whore.
Fall of the House of Usher:
Usher, that degenerate prick,
Harbored fantasies twisted and sick.
'Til a flaw in the mansion,
Much worse than my scansion,
Covered Usher and sister with brick.
Charlotte’s Web
“Some Pig” wrote the literate spider
While Wilbur, the pig, just grew wider.
Charlotte’s own home-spun tracts
Saved the pig from the axe –
That’s too bad! I love roast ham and cider.
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
On a night dark and dreary for sure,
Didst I pine for my lady Lenore,
'Til arrived here a guest,
Foul dark feathered pest,
Quoth that bloody black bird, “Nevermore!”
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:
Meet Guy Montag, unsettled fire-setter:
He burns books, but decides it’s better
To abscond with a few,
Hoping he won’t come to rue
That’s he’s not following the law to the letter.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert:
Emma wed Charles for the living,
Then discovered he was utterly boring.
For a buzz, she went shopping,
For the thrill, she went shtupping,
And dodged her bills through arsenic self-poisoning.
Gulliver’s Travels
Sailor Gulliver travelled the sea
And found places odd, you’ll agree.
Lilliputians were tiny
(and really quite whiney)
But the Horse-folk were nice as could be.
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser:
Through passive Carrie M., what Dreiser says is
That sex, alienation, and market forces
Undermine us they would,
As they did to Hurstwood,
So pay no mind to a PYT’s tresses!
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway:
Though not all that rich in dialogue,
Hemingway’s fish tale’s a storied travelogue
Of the Florida Strait
For Cubans who won’t wait
For Castro to reach his epilogue.
