Mrs. Hudson's Poetry Page: The Mazarin Stone

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Welcome once again to my poetry page!

I hope each week you will read Dr. Watson’s delightful narrative and then go on to write a poem related to it in some way. All forms of poetry are permitted, and further down the page there is a selection you might like to consider using over the coming weeks.

And here, courtesy of my housemaid Rachel, is this week’s suggested poem to read—a suggestion inspired by the themes and subjects in this week's story. Hopefully you will enjoy the poem, and perhaps it may give you some ideas for a poem of your own or allow you to look at Dr. Watson's story in a new way.



The Accompanist

By Dick Allen


Note from Rachel: I will confess that I am sometimes saddened when I see the good Dr. Watson relegated to minor supporting roles in Mr. Holmes's cases. I remember happier days. Yet, it is a comfort to me that he continues to lend his support where he may, offering as much or as little as our dear detective's plans require of him.



Thank you so much to Rachel. And here is also a new poetry form to try: the enuig.


Wikipedia gives this definition:

The enuig, enueg or enuech (Old Occitan "complaint, vexation") is a genre of lyric poetry… ...the enuig was generally a litany of complaints, few of them connect topically to the others…

Raymond Hill defined an enueg as "the enumeration in epigrammatic style of a series of vexatious things".


Here is my example:


Mr. Holmes, Billy and the rooms -
Apparently they remain just the same.
My back locks whenever I bend.
I don’t need an outfit to play an old dame.

I can’t run as fast now when the carpet’s on fire.
I look in the mirror and see there my mother.
But the final indignity of my old age -
Waxwork-turning duties assigned to another.



But you do not have to use this form. Any form of poetry is welcome this week—and every week! Here are a few suggestions for you:

221B verselet, abecedarian poetry, acrostic poetry, alexandrine, ballad, barzelletta, beeswing, blackout poetry, blitz poem, blues stanza, bref double, Burns stanza, call and response, chastushka, cinquain, circular poetry, clerihew, colour poems, compound word verse, concrete poetry, Cornish verse, curtal sonnet, débat, décima, diamante, doggerel, double dactyl, echo verse, ekphrasis, elegiac couplet, elegiac stanza, elfje, englyn, enuig, epigram, epistle, epitaph, epulaeryu, Etheree, fable, Fib, florette, found poetry, free verse, ghazal, haiku, hay(na)ku, In Memoriam stanza, Italian sonnet, jueju, kennings poem, lanturne, lies, limerick, line messaging, list poem, lyric poetry, mathnawī, micropoetry, mini-monoverse, musette, nonsense verse, palindrome poetry, pantoum, Parallelismus Membrorum, poem cycle, quatern, quintilla, renga, rhyming alliterisen, riddle, rimas dissolutas, rime couée, rispetto, Schüttelreim, sedoka, septet, sestina, shadorma, sonnet, stream of consciousness, tanka, tercet, terza rima, tongue twister poetry, triangular triplet, trine, triolet, Tyburn, villanelle


Please leave all your poems inspired by The Mazarin Stone in the comments on this post. I look forward to seeing them!


Warm regards,

Mrs. Hudson

Comments

Clerihew

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Count Negretto Sylvius
Amoral, rich and hideous
Came in to acquire the Mazarin Stone
And was gulled by a wax bust and a gramophone

An enuig

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Doyle major, I expect now much better from you.
Watson a walk-on? Co-starring the page?
Don’t cut out your Boswell’s beautiful poetry -
This reads as directions for performing on stage.

Carbuncle becomes here a lost yellow stone.
A waxwork, a base Count. It all is ‘plate-glass’.
You’re recycling ideas, indeed are you not?
C plus. No gold star. See me after class.

Rachel's poem

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I like the final line "playing the part you've made yours." At least Watson can rest easy in knowing that many, many fans clap as hard for him as Sherlock Holmes and his absence (or virtual absence) from The Mazarin Stone only accentuates his vital role.

Mrs. Hudson's poem

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's brilliant. I hadn't thought of that. Watson's reduced to a messenger boy and her vital role of bust-turning is also outsourced. Boo!

Enuig

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

The rooms are most untidy
The table’s acid stained
There are pipes in my coal scuttle
My tenant is not trained
His hours are most irregular
He’s stolen my old brolly
He wants his meals at awkward times
I must be off my trolley

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Lovely! I love the brolly/trolley and the fact it's Mrs. Hudson's parasol.

Enuig

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

‘Tis trying to decide
where to commence, where to begin
the list of grievous flaws
of Stone of Mazarin

Not all is fractured, warped
Though much will verily displease
The forest is abysmal;
consider, though, the trees.

The person third is odd,
It roams, too distant and aloof,
abandons sleuth and doctor, rests
with villains, sans reproof.

But bits of scene so dear!
The coal is scuttled, charts upon the wall
The violin, the pipes,
charred bench of acid-pall.

Who is this Billy-page,
who by our hero bides?
Our sleuth is carved to fit
only a Watson by his sides!
Who is this satellite,
orbiting our Saturn,
who doesn’t know the tales of old
but knows his sleeping pattern?
Who is this timeless lad,
without whom Holmes can’t do,
when murder is announced,
who is he, who, who, who?
And why is Watson out,
Not is, but was, has been?
As if he’s worth much less
than bubbly gasogene!
And why’s our Boswell sent
upon an errand low
to pass a note, and why, in heavens,
does he agree to go?!

Yet jewels glitter in the slag;
choice veins await the mines.
The ore may lack in light,
but shine these precious lines:
The rest of me is a mere appendix.
This man has come for his own purpose, but he may stay for mine.
Consider the furniture!

Clever words, but commonplace
the uninspired nature of each face:
a villain dark, a sidekick slow
a Lord who needs a thrashing.
A cursed gem, a waxhead Holmes,
old props get a rehashing
from better tales of yore,
reveal their clumsy mashing.

Old sleight of hand meets modern ruse
And our rogues are oddly docile.
They leave in ‘cuffs, give Holmes
their best, without so much a jostle.

But Holmes’s best trick of all?
Old lady with baggy parasol!
Concludes the tale as many do
with dinner ordered just for two.

Just for two?
But who? But who?
A finale most uncertain.
Minds wander and they ponder
the falling Mazarin curtain.