From a 2018 "Conversation with Billy Collins" (Booth), found because I was making spaghetti and remembering the epigraph, which I'd just encountered at the top of the poem "Vivace!"
I don't want to reprint an entire poem on my blog, but I will link to this other blog that did see fit to do what I won't do. You'll find the full text of "Vivace!" in a blog post titled "I Figured Out the Perfect Evening Activity."
The "perfect activity" is not eating spaghetti. It is memorizing a poem... This time, I was at a corner table at Pasta Vivace!...
Another activity, possibly not perfect: Find an epigram that you could put at the top of a page and see if a poem happens.
P.S. I hope you don't mind if I give this post the tag "aphorism." I don't have a tag "epigram" and I can't believe there's a pasta strand of difference.
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33 टिप्पणियां:
Weirdly, I read this post right after seeing a Barilla ad with a Formula 1 tie-in, that shows Italian drivers and mechanics chowing down on spaghetti around the car they're building. The tag line was something like "Barilla keeps peole together." CC, JSM
Busier than a cat trying to bury a turd on a marble floor...
"Even the Pope wears underwear, I think."
They f you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f'd up in their turn
By fools in old-school hats and coats
Who were half the time soppy-stern
And half at each others' throats
Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.
—Phlilip Larkin
Thanks. Billy C is a writer I've always intended to get around to, and with this push, I think I will.
There is a married couple, the Olsens, that write piano music books for children The husband reported the following dinner table conversation:
Wife: We wrote a new song. "I have a dog, her name is Betty, Her favorite food is cold spaghetti."
Preschool daughter: That's silly!
Wife: Why?
Daughter: Betty is a girl's name! Dogs are boys.
Wife: ??
Daughter: Cats are girls and dogs are boys.
Wife: Actually dogs can also be girls.
Long pause.
Daughter: Oh! Poodles!
My favorite poem is by Martin Luther (my word for word translation)
Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
He is on earth come poor
Dass er unser sich erbarm,
that he on us have mercy,
Und in dem Himmel mache reich,
and in the heaven make (us) rich,
Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich.
and his beloved angels like.
The position of the German rhymes for emphasis matters.
Correlate with Augustine, for whom charity - thinking the best of others instead of the worst - is soul-saving.
I used an epigram in my report regarding a secret microphone in the Knox County courthouse and the former county attorney twisted its meaning and relevance.
Meh. He should have cut 90% of it, and spent a few hours polishing the rest. That poem “All I Wanna Do,” did it so much better.
Oh my, I haven't thought of this in such a long time....
The mention of Billy Collins sent me to my bookshelf to consult my copy of his book, "Sailing Alone Around The Room," which I bought in the way back when Collins was named "Poet Laureate" in 2001.
...when my eyes skipped right over my copies of "The Education of Hyman Kaplan," by Leonard Ross, and "The Devil's Dictionary," by Ambrose Bierce, and landed on my paperback copy of Don Marquis's "archy and mehitabel," which is such a quirky (and unique) poetry collection.
From the back cover:
don marquis first introduced archy the cockroach and mehitabel, a cat in her ninth life, in his newspaper column, 'the sun dial,' in 1916. in a previous incarnation, archy was a free-verse poet, while mehitabel claims to be a reincarnation of cleopatra and other regal ladies. she is 'toujours gai,' but archy is more philosophical. it is he who records their experiences and observations on the boss's typewriter late at night. but since he must throw himself headfirst onto each key to operate the typewriter, he can't make capital letters. but as archy writes --
they
are always interested in technical
details when the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not
it is.
=> The Coming of Archy
http://donmarquis.org/coming.htm
Barnaby and O'Malley was a superior WWII comic strip, still available in books. There are two books of the WWII strips. I think the post WWII one isn't as good.
I"d rate it better than any since.
"I was working on a poem yesterday that had an epigraph from the poet Christopher Morley: 'No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.'"
Especially if he has pets.
Dog eating spaghetti contest
What about linguine? (sniff)
"Strewed over with hurts" could be the seed of many good poems.
Thank you rhhardin!
"There will be blood"
Seems apt.
“She rekindled the relationship at the funeral.”
"Dave Begley said...
I used an epigram in my report regarding a secret microphone in the Knox County courthouse and the former county attorney twisted its meaning and relevance.
9/15/25, 1:13 PM"
That's it? Who, what, where, when, why and how.
All the spaghetti (and linguine) talk is making me hungry.
Introducing Pete Buttigieg Pasta e fagioli.
Full Moon:
On the Knox County website. AI could probably summarize it.
News Channel Nebraska had an accurate story.
I HAVE been lonely eating spaghetti. The life of a road-warrior engineer is often exhausting, and lonely. Cooking in hotel rooms or eating out at cheap restaurants is, at best, existence.
Dating women in Olathe Kansas (road warrioring at the Allied Signal plant) Motel 6's and Best Westerns isnt happening.
Settling down and being married cured that.
No man is lonely eating spaghetti
With Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
I think that I like
Haikus better, since they just
Count the syllables.
Of the vicissitudes of life
No one is ready
So I will just stay here
And eat my bisketti
Narr said...
No man is lonely eating spaghetti
With Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
9/15/25, 6:34 PM
I am waiting.... :- )
They have a similar aphorism in New Guinea.
No man is lonely while eating a missionary or an explorer.
"I am waiting . . ."
I'll never apologize. Never.
For this kind of thing, Donald Justice is your man. He considered epigraphs the last point in a poetic conversation to which he would add his two iambic cents....
I have a few myself fashioned this way. e.g. I found a quote from Horace (to whom we owe the word “rainbow”) and from Decartes (to whom we owe the depoeticization of rainbows and so much more!):
“…Aut Pluvius Describitur Arcus”
-for Cecilia
And this makes me remember an invention for making signs appear in the sky, which would cause great wonder in those who were ignorant of the causes. —Descartes
…or the rainbow is described.
—Horace
I (Air)
Remonstratively warbling, robin feels all out
Of sorts as orioles quick-shot repeat her themes,
Yammered by mid-air finch in cinch-winged turnabout—
(Giving as well, caged cockatoos their jungle dreams).
Because of this, the gnatcatcher’s potsherd nest still seems
Inevitable, like the bunting’s bumbling song.
“Verily!” the martins cry. “Spring, be long! Belong!”
II (Earth)
Restless to be wintered out of ash, the fey rose
Obliges poppy fields to keep their ground en masse;
Yes, and grazing dandelions scatter to impose
Gossamer parachutes across vanity’s grass.
Bountiful chicory, meanwhile, disheveled, crass,
Inveigles prodigiously with the rattleweed.
“Verily!” the crocus cries — thus discrete — so decreed.
III (Water)
Resurgent wing and stem aside, the blood and will
Of men, in urgent altitudes of liquid sunlight,
Yearn (as perhaps Noah for chardonnay) to fill
Gangly veins with chlorophyll — chartreuse-bright.
But first to dare the waters, bird and branch alone might
In Saxon dyes anoint and indelibly remark,
“Verily, creation’s arc empurples creation’s ark!”
IV (Fire)
Resplendent as Stravinsky’s shrieking-red firebird,
Ocular as God’s own gold-smoldering vine,
Yawning a blaze of aural variety, the word
Gains a verdant glow: pluvius arcus, the line
By Horace sparkles a certain cerulean shine —
Iridescent bolt from the cobalt to bestow,
Verily, a premise, a promise — the rainbow.
V (Quintessence)
Recurring to causes, his eyes flame-tipped with red
Of dying day, Descartes juices a bitter orange,
Yawning at yellow-bricked truth — the one only road.
Green is time, though. Clearing the air, winds rearrange
Blue thoughts to arc along electric lines. These strange
Integrations involve midnight’s lonely indigo
Verily with violets in an inviolate vertigo.
Christopher Morley! I haven't heard that name in years. A long time ago I was on a retreat at Benet Lake monastery and above a sink in the retreatant's kitchen was this verse:
"When we on simple rations sup
How easy is the washing up.
But heavy feeding complicates
The task by soiling many plates."
It took me a long time to find out that it was from a poem by Christopher Morley.
Nancy said...
...
Daughter: Oh! Poodles!
I laughed entirely too hard at that. But thinking of dogs as males and cats as females is not all that unusual.
"Thinking of dogs as males and cats as females is not all that unusual."
See "Pale Fire" for instance.
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