"Transpose on to standup his reading of
Gregory Corso’s Man Entering the Sea, which concentrates all of evolution into the spectacle of a bather going for a dip, and you get – bit of a clash, this –
Michael McIntyre’s routine about swimming pools. ('It’s all right once you’re in!') That brand of comedy, you might think, can only seem superficial by comparison with poetry. Then you listen to Skinner’s account of what poets do: 'They see an ordinary thing that we all see, and then they illuminate it. They do something with that everyday thing that makes it sacred, if you like.' Remind you of anyone else? Another profession that takes the mundane and fashions it into something intensely, transcendentally alive? Skinner’s podcast is all about the poetry, of course. But you can’t listen without the thought occurring that comedians, himself included, are poets of a sort, too."
Writes Brian Logan, in
"From standup to stanzas: Frank Skinner's terrific guide to poetry/The comedian’s new podcast is bursting with enthusiasm for poems. If standup forces him to be funny, here he forces himself to be true" (The Guardian).
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liberal license
Speaking of poetry, I finally got access to Bing's ChatGPT service yesterday. Here's what it produced when I asked it to "write a poem about electric vehicles in the style of Robert Frost":
The Charge Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
But not because of what you think; The road I chose was not for me. It led me to a charging link Where I could plug my car and drink A cup of coffee or some tea.
The other road was smooth and fast, But it was crowded with gasoline cars. They spewed their fumes and made me gasp, They honked their horns and made me rasp, They spoiled my view of nature’s stars.
So I’m glad I took the road less traveled by, Not for its beauty or its lore, But for its promise of a cleaner sky, A greener earth, a bluer eye, A future worth living for.
(This poem is inspired by Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken, which uses a simple rhyme scheme of ABAAB and an iambic tetrameter rhythm. It also uses imagery, symbolism, and irony to convey its message.)
You might be interested to know that Joe Pera has a new podcast. Jo Firestone was hilarious on the first episode.
Thanks for the recommendation. I became a Frank Skinner fan through his appearance on Taskmaster. Loved watching him trying to gather tears from crew members by singing Old Shep to them.
https://youtu.be/-4L5zNmAfbQ
AA, you should rename your blog Life of the Mind.
It's the best example of that I know.
Frank also does a radio show each Saturday which becomes the Frank Skinner Show podcast. With a couple comedy mates.
"Frank also does a radio show each Saturday which becomes the Frank Skinner Show podcast. With a couple comedy mates."
I know. I've listened to some of it. Might not work for me. It's sort of like the podcast with fast-moving English accents that I really like — "Giles Coren Has No Idea" — but it's too much everyone being too inanely pleased with themselves over nothing.
@casssandra lite
Thanks!
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