The Coleridge Collection Part II: Parodies and Imitations

An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism and Scholarship
Volumes I-III
By
Walter B. Crawford
With the research and editorial assistance of
Ann M. Crawford

PART II.4 PARODIES AND IMITATIONS

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[S II.4 1962] SEAGRAM DISTILLERS COMPANY, N.Y.C. "The rime of the 'Modern' Mariner." New Yorker (1962). Il.

 

Seagram's advertisement
  • Full-page advertisement of which the top two-thirds is a photo of the upper portion of a lighthouse. Standing with drinks in their hands are two formally dressed young couples, one inside the light-chamber, the other on the railed catwalk around the outside of the chamber. In the 8 ballad stanzas below, the first-person narrator says he "sought seclusion [at the top of a lighthouse] by the sea" but when alone "dwelt forlorn," until he received a telephone call from his "Fair One," who said, "'Just leave the beacon on'." She and friends arrived with "a precious gift / A gift to please the eye, / A gift more rare than mountain air: / 'Twas Seagram's Extra Dry. // Just gin, you say? I say you nay. / . . . 'Tis amber dry perfection," which made their evening special. Indeed, "on that parapet / We promised to be married." // "Together now, alone no more, / Sans care, sans worldly megrims, / We toast long life as man and wife, / With amber gin by Seagram's!"
  • Tear-sheet given to the CCC by Donald Weinstock.
  • Click here to see the graphic enlarged.

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[S II.4 1992] KENT, David A, and D R Ewen, eds. Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831. Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP; L & Toronto: Associated UPs, 1992. 409 pp. Frontispiece is Gillray engraving.

  • C in introductions to Hogg's Isabelle (pp 129ff); extracts from Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (pp 156ff); Moir's, Christabel , Part Third (pp 185ff); J H Reynolds, The Dead Asses (pp 203ff); Anon, The Nose-Drop: A Physiological Ballad (pp 249ff). Index also enters: "parodies of: self-parody, 32-33; in "Bards of the Lake," 64; "Playhouse Musings" (from Rejected Addresses), 91; "The Resurrection Tragedy" (from Leaves of Laurel), 98; "Isabelle" (from The Poetic Mirror), 129; from Nightmare Abbey, 158; "The Rime of the Auncient Waggonere," 163; "Christabel, Part Third," 186. All are in volume III.


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[S II.4 1993] PRITCHETT, Oliver. "The Hype Is All Around." Sunday Telegraph (25 Jy 1993), 26. Il.

  • "There is one thing that does not ring true today about C's poem The RAM. . . . The obvious flaw is that the Wedding Guest would instantly recognize that in the grey-beard loon he was looking at a highly marketable media package. . . . I have now written a companion piece to C's poem, to help people see the story in a clearer perspective. Mine is called The Rime of the Ancient Publicist. Not, of course, that he is all that ancient, but he works for the august organisation Xanadu International Management Inc."
  • Author then gives prose synopsis of his parody-imitation, beginning: "One day, on his way to a show-business wedding at the Hello! Chapel of Deep Happiness and Fulfilment, he catches sight of the ragged, wild-eyed Mariner loitering in the street. 'Hang on a sec,' he says to his chums. 'I bet that old cove has an interesting tale to tell.' // He goes over to the man, who wants nothing to do with him. He takes him by the elbow in a friendly way, but the Mariner cries out: 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-toppered dude!' // Pressed by the Publicist, the Mariner makes a reluctant admission. 'There was a ship,' quoth he. // Now the Publicist has the Mariner's attention. He holds him with his glittering offer. He proposes a major newspaper serialisation--'My Voyage to Hell and Back: Lone Mariner's Astonishing Story.' He suggests selling an exclusive interview to breakfast television." (Cartoon shows the AM seated in front of the TV interviewer, who asks, "Ancient Mariner, what was your worst moment?")
  • Synopsis continues with considerable detail and ends: "At the end of my version, one of the other wedding guests meets the Mariner in the street. // 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! / From the fiends that plague like this! / Why look'st thou so?' 'With my cross-bow / I shot the Publicist'."
  • From clipping from Rosemary Elizabeth Coleridge Middleton.


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[S II.4 1994] BEARD, Henry. "Kubla Kat." By STC's Cat. In Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse. By Henry Beard. Ils by Gary Zamchick. (A John Boswell Associates Book). NY: Villard Bks (1994). Pp 20-1 of vii, 87 pp. 185 x 130mm.

  • "In Xanadu did Kubla Kat / A splendid sofa-bed decree," with silken cushions packed with swansdown, amid scents of "rare hypnotic herbs, Sweet source of wondrous dreams," and of mint and catnip and spice floating on the breeze. "A songbird with a small guitar" in a vision once sang a song to me, and when I arose "I built that divine divan," and "None would cry, Get down! Begone!" but "let him catnap on his bed, / For he on catnip leaves has fed, / And lapped the milk of Paradise." The 39 lines are framed in color drawing of cat catnapping on silken cushion, fragrances "floating on the balmy breeze," etc.
  • Discovered by Louise Lubbe.


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[S II.4 1995] CRACRAFT, Stuart McLure (with apologies to STC). "Hackadu."

  • A 54-line imitation of the 54-line KK, only sometimes and irregularly metrical and in need of some syntactical clarification, but an imitation that can be enjoyed by persons with some computer expertise. Highlights: "In Hackadu did Hackers Few / An awesome program-hack command: / Where 20, the sacred system, grew / Through monitors nobody knew / Down during the great demand" (1-5). "And here was software smothered by edit-line effects" (8). "But oh! those abiding Hackers Few were cunning / And lept the heights of unimaginable lossage! / A savage place; as daemonical and sinning / As e'er which plastered a screen with '%DECSYSTEM-20 Not Winning'" (12-15). "And 'mid this tumult Hackers Few heard from afar / Ancestral systems declaring war!" (29-30). "And all the users who saw this mighty battle raging, / And shrieked, Tsk! Tsk! / While the 10s' and 20s' flashed screens, their crashing disks! / The Few weaved a carnage about this awful outpouring, / And closed the 10s' and 20s' eyes, / For the Hackers Few had earlier fed upon the lies And now had drunk the milk of Personal Computing" (48-54).
  • Discovered by Wendy Culotta.


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[S II.4 1997] ANON. The Rime of the Auntshint Marimer--In Seben Peices. De Ebonic Lectric Library O De Classics, NovusOrdo (1997).

  • On 8 and 9 Ja 1997, in the Chicago Tribune, North Sports Final Edition, page 3N, Mike Royko devoted two of his regular columns to Ebonics, the term given to the street talk of blacks by the Oakland, California, school district, in what critics damned as a misguided effort to attract federal funding by equating that dialect with languages such as Vietnamese and Spanish in the district's bilingual education program.
  • In his first column, "When You Talk in Ebonics, Words Just Get in the Way," Royko used his own version of Ebonics (rather than "Honkyonics," he said). (On 4 Je 1997, a comic strip by syndicated cartoonist Wiley Miller showed an open door signed "Teacher Retraining Program," and a man with a briefcase reading a larger sign beside the doorway: "Directory / Ebonics, Rm 100; Caucasionics, Rm 101; Asianonics, Rm 102; Hispanonics, Rm 103; Menonics, Rm 104; Womenonics, Rm 105; Psychobabble, Rm 106." A woman in the open doorway says, "Lord, I miss English.")
  • Royko's second column, "Money Talks, and Some Are Trying to Translate It," began: "Suddenly, the Great Onics Race is on as various groups and individuals rush to have their own whatsis-American language officially recognized with federal funds." After humorous examples of Chiconics (Chicagoese) and Hebonics (Jewish English), he continued: "Meanwhile, the Internet is humming with instant opinions and developments in Ebonics, the African-American language that allegedly has its roots in such tribal languages as Ebu, Ubu, Abu and Abadabado. / One group has started an on-line service, offering to translate any portion of literary classics written by dead, old, Eurotrash white guys into Ebonics. / The web page says: 'Welcome to the FREE Ebonics Lectric Library of Classical Literature.' / . . . . So far, the list of translations includes works from the following: [1] 'De Ebology O Plado,' 'Da Defence O Socradees' by Plado. [2] 'Paradice Lawst' (fust book) by Jim Milton. [3] 'Damlet--De "Man" O Demark' by Willy Shakpeer. [4] 'I Sin De Bydee Lectric,' by Wald Widmant. [5] 'Rime O Da Auntshint Marimer'."
  • After his death on 29 Ap 1997, the career of the great Chicago columnist Royko was celebrated in all the major American news media. Royko's articles appeared also in the Internet edition of the Chicago Tribune. Use of the search engine "Yahoo" led to the line-for-line Ebonic translation of C's The RAM as entered above. The unidentified translator made fairly consistent use of the following presumed Ebonic features:
  • Spelling to indicate pronunciation: -a' = -er; -in' = -ing; d = th; Ah, -ah = I, -i, -y; o' = of, -o' = -or; haid = head; so's = so; likes = like; Fum = From; sump'n = something; fust = first; Sho' = Sure; A'cuz = Because.
  • Spelling only: wuz = was; moshun = motion.
  • Grammar: be = is, wuz = were, dun did = did.
  • Vocabulary: some = a (even Ah am some-feared = I am a-feared), jimmy'd = opened, gots = have, gots'ta = will, dude = man, whup = beat, God's dojigger = God's name, baaaad = good, honky = white, brother = black, doodad = thing, Mama = Woman, T' Snow Flake Queen = To Mary Queen, wasted = killed, mosey on down = come, funky = strange, alley = path, Da real deep = The very deep.
  • Expressions frequently added, mostly at line ends: Right on! (77). Dig dis (61). Damn (56 inserted). Sheeeiit (53). Ya' know? (14). What it is, Mama! (12). Examples:
Verse and Location
Verse Location
It be an ancient Marina', 
And he stoppeth one o' three. Sheeeiit. 
"By dy long grey beard and glitterin' eye, 
Now wherefore stopp'st dou me?		 1
Be dose ha' ribs through which de Sun 
Dun did pea', as through some grate? 
And be dat Mama all ha' crew? 
Be dat some DEATH? and be dere two? 
Be DEATH dat woman's mate?		 185
Ha' lips wuz red, ha' looks wuz free, 
Ha' locks wuz yellow as gold, dig dis: 
Ha' skin wuz as honky as leprosy, 
De Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH wuz she, 
Who dicks man's blood wid cold. Sheeeiit.		  
Within de shadow o' de ship 
Ah watched deir rich attire, dig dis: 
Blue, glossy green, and velvet brother, 
Dey coiled and swam; and every track 
Wuz some flash o' golden fire. Sheeeiit.		 277
Dis Hermit baaaad lives in dat wood 
Which slopes down t' de sea. Sheeeiit. 
How loudly his sweet voice he rears. 
Right on! He loves t' talk wid marineres 
Dat mosey on down fum some far countree. Sheeeiit.		 514
"Dear Lord. Right on! it hath some fiendish look-- 
(De Pilot made reply) 
Ah am some-feared"--"Push on, push on!" 
Said de damn Hermit cheerily. Ya' know?		 538
Ah pass, likes night, fum land t' land; 
Ah gots funky powa' o' speech; 
Dat moment dat his face Ah see, 
Ah know de dude dat must hear me, dig dis: 
T' him mah tale Ah teach. What it is, Mama!		 586
Farewell, farewell. Right on! but dis Ah tell 
T' dee, dou Weddin'-Guest. Right on! 
He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both dude and bird and beast.		 610
He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All dings both great and small; 
Fo' de dear God who loveth us 
He made and loveth all. What it is, Mama!		  
De Marina', whose eye be bright 
Whose beard wid age be hoar, 
Be gone, dig dis: and now de Weddin'-Guest 
Turned fum de bridegroom's doo'.		  
He went likes one dat hath been stunned, 
And be o' sense forlorn, dig dis: 
A sadda' and some wisa' dude, 
He rose de damn morrow morn.		  
  • Discovered by Eric W. Crawford; located and downloaded by Leslie Kay Swigart.


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[S II.4 1999] STONES, Graeme, and John Strachan, eds. Parodies of the Romantic Age. 5 vols. Pickering & Chatto (1999). I, ed Stones: The Anti-Jacobin. II, ed Strachan: Collected Verse Parody. III, ed Stones: Collected Prose Parody. IV, ed Strachan: Warreniana, by William Frederick Deacon. V, ed Strachan: Rejected Articles, by Peter George Patmore. Index: V, 249-300 (STC section, V, 259-60).

  • "Each volume in this edition possesses its own introduction and is intended to stand on its own feet" (I, xiv). The parodies are produced during the Romantic period, except for a few done in the Victorian period (II, xiii). Editors supply an Introductory Note before each selection. In the index, under the name of the author being parodied are listed only the titles of the works being parodied, but not the authors and titles of the parodies. The anthology may include parodies not in the Coleridge Bibliography, volume III.