Experimental Poetry
(a tribute to one of the great, but largely under-rated experimental poets of modern times)
Nick nocky nick nock
Nicky nacky noo
Nick nocky nick nock
Nack noo.
Comments
Hi John, Am I right in saying it was St Dodd
who was banned from TV for saying,
"A man has a lot of hair on his head
but on the whole a woman has more."?
Ahh provocative Doddy.
I have to say that my own interpretation is a little at variance from the "repressed sexuality" theory of Isobel. (I am , of course, more than happy to help you explore this.)
For me the very vehicle itself (conventional metre and rhyme) is being sentenced to death by Dodd. Take the rhyme of "noo" and "noo". Many a lesser poet would overlook the symmetry of the two words. Some critics have indeed denied it is a rhyme at all. But this is the genius of Dodd - to make a difficult rhyme where none exists, condemning rhyme as a device to the dustbin of passe poetry.
Then consider the clipped final line which derives its power from the enforced caesura. Dodd clearly understands as a cursory glance at his lyrical masterpiece "Tears for Souvenirs" will demonstrate, the importance not of the music but of the gaps in between.
His use of the musical rest is crying out to us to "Listen to the silence". Thus he is also condemning rhythm to the dustbin of literary Luddism.
"Move on." he is saying, "Poetry is dead".
Aah Doddy. Probably the most underrated and talented encyclopaedic comic of modern times. A true genius in my book.
What a beautiful day; what a beautiful day for shoving your tickling stick up the armpit of experimental poetry - and thoroughly discumknockerating it!
You make your point so eloquently Mr Coopey, and with a quality that experimental poetry seems not to have heard of - perhaps you should inform them of the existence of - HUMOUR!
:) :) :)
Did he study at the school of "ying tong" John?
And yet one wonders if the poet isn't expressing some deeply repressed sexual malaise...
Remove ck from nock and o from noo and you get no, no, no repeating itself throughout this poem. Remove cky from nacky ck from nack and you get na, na - which would be the lazy equivelant.
The shortness of the final line re-inforces this negative overtone. Nicky nacky noos is alternative vocabulary for knickers - a potent poem John - keep it up.
Is it a record by the Diddy Men?
That's what I was trying to say, Steve.
Anarchic in approach, the poet takes Dada-ism and personalises it into Dodda-ism.
The poet invites us to consider the juxtaposition of the "knock" (or state police harassment) with the "nick" (state incarceration). Yet he gives us hope of eluding detection through skill (the nack), offering Victorian echoes of the Artful Dodger.
Linguistically, it is no less revolutionary. Dodd condenses consonance between the nasality of the N and the crispness of the K. At the same time concentrating purely on the hard assonance of just "a", "i", and "o".
Observers have noted his deliberate reluctance to use "e" lest we accuse him of self-aggrandisement ("k" "e" "n").
In short, the universe in verse.
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Yvonne Brunton
Sun 4th Nov 2012 01:18
I trust that this is not plagiarism, John, and that Doddy has not registered these words as intellectual property.
To be hypercritical for a moment I feel that the alliteration is a little overworked but apart from that, if this is a tribute to the great and wonderful Ken, penned by your own fair hand ( not that I've had a close-up of your hand so the bit about fair is poetic licence and you can feel free to ignore it if you so wish) erm where was I? Oh yes, If you wrote it then all the literary analysis by our learned colleagues in praise of its poetic skill and artistry is actually praising you and your work not Doddy's.