Seeking the sun and feeling the sky,
the bumbledy centipede swerves and winds by –
Consoling caution with captive replies,
the yippee-ki cowboys sweer by their eyes.
Sing me a lumbolesh, blow on a conch –
fling to the puzzling cat on its haunch.
Open your eyes to the sunlit above
and swerve and console and just sweer,
well sort of.
Skimilvee this, and jorating us that
around the sculpting parapet.
Pleady, the cosmities open and close
and stars swim around in the bath.
Immanent, always the commuting desire
allaying our jittles and wrath-
turning lead into gold, then likewise is sold
and evaporates in a quintet.
So, jorate the statumly, conquer the reavenly
all you would want, or even empath
Turns back in a cyclic anomaly
and sculpts a new parapet.
In a thaych from a hayd, in different seldia
sailing and sauntering, lengly along –
soutery pleasantry goes a lot farther
than fowling diameters and biling a cause.
A thaych on a hayd, though blonding or greyishing
is bankled and combed where it sits, where it lands
And enschewous decibels echo a singable
sound in the topost, the autory gland.
On thayches with hayds, so many to count among
wordansing, all the while twirling their ways.
Countermand into the idents and lipses
and give no more thought to unwreakable days.
When indespant and lonse,
the words open up
and breathe on me
barthey verses, to which I’m wont.
Panoramic, juncted words –
brandished in copper,
malleable to the heart of trees
that shade the summer sun.
But sometimes sotted into mine,
the gold babuery of a balmy poet-
meant to insinuate and/or describe,
the otherwise abstract baptivized.
And other-sides in the silence
of a toiling stone wall,
an unlikely salving to soothe-
a compote of strength and solitude,
something only a barthey verse could do.
Among the quichens grows a kree
a site-astoric flustsymbly.
A kree is there, not roneously,
but freet and gorl and groverly.
And how it came to grow just there,
the primmets wonder with atious care,
For quichens do not keep or share
their time or place or own elsewhere.
The primmets garnered brave and asked
the kree just how it came to pass
that it was given reign to mass
and live with quichens, in their class.
The kree looked puzzled, audly moussed
the primmetts had not gaged – deduced
the kree was here for years to roost
and shared it with the quichens fruste.
I heard the words
and their correctedness,
in picturesque suffectedness.
She spoke them with such emplity
and vocal resnoguity.
I could not dare not write them down
and use them later for colored sounds
To poke at the sentence
bruskly and paciously,
or converse on the gartan
defendled loquaciously.
And if the strunogrammatic skills that I now display
cause you to mattle or otherwise say,
What silliness falls from there on page?
My stars! This is nonsense.
It’s nothing so sage.
It’s second hand outwisms
pure and just plain.
So read and enjoy it,
my emplitious refrain.
In a twildly dusk, I see
a flaxum and her mimbles, we
open talk and loydal sing
with sunbeam-laden mulbering.
The verse rafeals a higher cause,
and willently, we sing then pause,
our fragenotions echo there
as we chorus contricare.
As just as then, we breathed and stopped,
fixembled, stable, clembed and swapped
A song sincerely wooed, then freed
and flaxum/poet now agreed.
Then in mirist silence found,
tracing back with embered sound
songs at dusk- the most revered
The ferrel-maried moon appeared
and strummed the night to denser aires
with open chords and fortunes fair.
Come, and go wand’ring for churier times,
away from the riptin and rinants, their crime,
the villor and vagell in all their retorts,
The jumb-poling penguity, wanstier sort.
Observe the small paregallow sat on a twig,
that tweets a small tune, with a purintly squig.
Clasp hold my hand without chuberous thought,
and pick up the footspeed, with clip and with clought.
And when we have reached, with flooks and with guills,
the strentberry tree with its tassles and twills,
we’ll lay in the greenier grassles that wave
and meekestly coddle the songs that we saved.
Singing through tassles, and loring through twills
with our hands embraced tightly, and our giggles that thrill
the logus with all its galand and its hue.
Your grin and my smilishness, baylishly soothed.
Come and let’s wander a churier time,
clasp my hand, coddle and purintly rhyme.
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Should you be wondering “what does purintly mean,” I used a random nonsense word generator to help me with the words for this poem. The innocence conveyed by the silliness of the word choices was my goal. I often search for the greenier grassles that wave, just to have some quiet time, under a strentberry tree.
A cappella music (without instrumental accompaniment) is particularly enjoyable for me to listen to. As a poet (and an avocational musician), I am drawn to the similarities that poems and a cappella music have. Lyrical phrasing, meter, rhyming, and onomatopoeia mean so much to a cappella music, because it relies so heavily on the human vocal element.
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OK, so first of all…this setting of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is not done acappella. The composer is Sam Pottle (1934-1978). Interestingly, he also wrote many songs used on Sesame Street and cowrote The Muppet Show theme (with Jim Henson).
This song one of the most enjoyable songs I’ve ever performed in a choir…I *chortle* as I think about it. This poem has always held a special place in my brain. The nonsense vocabulary, the heroic details, the wry grin of people who recite it…Lewis Carroll had a tremendous ability to draw pictures with words, some that didn’t even exist prior to him using them. This poem is largely responsible for my foray into poetry. It has inspired some of recent poetry, The chnott and the sarborant and pub song.
So it is not acappella, but it is done with piano accompaniment and toy percussion accent instruments (I think I played the tamborine/rattle when we performed this in 1985-86), and much fun to listen to. The music fits the poem. An interesting point about performance is interpretation. This is true for poetry read as well as sung.
I present two versions from cyberspace. First, a very proper choral performance by the University of Utah Singers – well done (performed with great sarcasm) and a great recording to hear the different lines and harmonies and pay attention to the toy instruments.
And a second performance by the University of Maine Singers (a larger choral group), done with choreography, and some jocularity at the end. The performance revels in silliness….plus the video has the bonus of the Maine Stein Song (don’t know it, never been to Maine). Callooh!! Callay!!
I hope you enjoy it.
is it already time in sparity
for tomorrow’s song, conspiring
just past a moment’s caesura beshinding
and a quaver in triplets sequiling?
staccato, legato, and elluish garnishes,
reveling beats and cantabile varnishes,
capriccio encores, as slathibirs and borespors,
such singing will leave you reciting
the extrons and motile warblings
of pub-songs, warm and inviting.
and when you are done with the chorusing
of colly-woos and the hollo-joy-cholla,
drink a toast to the wencesial spirit, of course,
and say a prayer from the wells of your golla.
Taps and Ratamacues 