A quick hello from the Gromboolian Plain, where a new Edward Lear poem has been unearthed. Raise your glasses of Ring-bo-ree! You’ll find it here: in Notes & Queries (2020), thanks to Amy Wilcockson and Edmund Downey. And our ever-gratefulgobness goes to Marco Graziosi for the finely attuned octopodometer that is his blog.
Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions, #9
So long, so few, so faint, so true! Welcome back to the Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions!
We have a single bill this time, which is a kind of double bill singly. Or perhaps a bubble sill bingly. In the case of one or both, I present to you Bogey Beasts, a 1923 publication by Sidney H. Sime (1865-1941) and Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958). Sime was an English illustrator of the odd, whimsical, and grotesque, but also a poet. In 1905 he published pairings of grotesque illustrations of fantastical creatures with his own verses (which, interestingly, he called “jingles”) to describe them.
A few years later, he asked his friend Joseph Holbrooke to compose musical pieces to accompany the earlier work, not as settings but as complementary to them. The result was Bogey Beasts, published in 1923, with illustration, “jingles,” and scores. The music is dramatic and prankish, adding a whole new approach to the creatures described. Click here for a reading of the texts over the music, which is not how we were supposed to hear this. Each element should be given its own space. Alas, for this shoddy world. Click here for the text.
Check out more in: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE
Nonsense word generator
It has taken me some time to get over my bout of seasgouts so that I could expoon another batch of shmeash for you, but do not fear, I live, breathe, and quipmeomenner as in my youthful days. My birepuckless friend AC passed on this most practical and pussectionout website, the “nonsense word generator”:
https://www.soybomb.com/tricks/words/
It’s no-frills–but on command gives a long list of neologisms–new words–but these are not random. Apparently, this digital starry dynamo takes the most common English phonemes and puts them together into units that generally are morphologically correct, pronounceable, partially recognizable, even in terms of semi-semantics, to create non-words that pretend to be real words. This is a secret of good neologism creation, to keep the balance of meaning and non-meaning. Go there now unless you’re feeling a bit wardic or under the unworty.
Leave: A play in five acts (with new video)
An update on yearly doings, for those who have noticed a significant absence of me-ity in classrooms across Berklee, netherworldly nonsense salons, and tippling stations throughout Camberville. I’ve been on Leave this year, working on a new edition of Alan Watts’ book Nonsense (1967) with glabrous Watts scholar Peter Columbus, with support from Mark Watts and Jeff Berner (original publisher, OULIPO poet, and nonsensical soul). In addition, I’ve done artist residencies on Cape Cod (Truro Center for the Arts), in Skagaströnd, Iceland (NES Artist Residency), and on the tiny uninhabited island (except for scroobious snakes) of Källskär, in the Åland Islands (Åland Arts Council Residency). I’ve written poems and stories, created soundscapes, performed didgeridoo with organ in an Icelandic church, and created an original performance poem (with throat singing), which can now be seen HERE. I also breezed through Malta, at the Child and the Book conference, where my talk on BreakBeat poetry for children (written with Joseph Thomas) was AI-translated into nonsensical subtitles. I’ll be back in the classroom in January, maskless and ready to rumble.
Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions, #8
Guten diggity dag, dear nonsense naughtspeople! As we glide into the the summer here in this demihemisphere, with a semihemiquiver, we step into the current contemporaneous horror with our own weapons of contemplastic consiense! [The former sentence is your mantra, the former mantra is your sentence. Consider the gavel struck.]
Featured in this installment of Quackisitions is a newtcomer on the scene, a new kid on the tock: J. Rob Darcel. This nonsense prankster and rapper, a student at Central Michigan University, is lighting the social media world up with his koan-like rap, his tapping into impossibilia and topsy-curvy quick cuts with an equanimous earnestness earning him a few nonsense laurels. Here is his one music video, “Don’t Make Sense” (2021), and check out his prank videos wherein he asks for nonsensical weasel patties and worm knuckles at drive-throughs and Wal-Marts. Check him out: Instagram: @jrobdarcel TikTok: @jrobdarcel Snapchat: @jalen_rob
And for our featured writer… Stephen Mitchell is a poet, translator, and anthologist, not usually known for nonsense–but our crack staff at Gromboolia have the goods: it may come as no surprise that much of his work is related to mystical spirituality, which he began studying in the early 1970s, connecting him to Alan Watts and G. K. Chesterton. His 2003 book The Wishing Bone and other poems (Candlewick) made a few waves in the syllabub sea, garnering the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. See his poem, “The Answer,” a brilliant version of the wise nonsense fool figure
That’s it for the moment! Hang in there, everyone, and proudly brandish your nonsense in the face of the fulminating futz! Check out more in: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE
Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions, #7
Dear Citizens of Gromboolia, welcome to the long-awaited seventh installation of the Recent Quackisitions, now with bonus quack! When last we met, I was a good deal wiser and an ell and an aitch taller. But that was in another country, and besides, the inch is dead. Secretly, however, I have been twiddling away at the Anthology, and here I shall highlight the usual triumvirate of word, vision, and sound.
As for word, please give it up for Fosco Maraini (1912-2004). Maraini was an Italian photographer and anthropologist, but for our purposes here, a theoretician of nonsense. He proposed “metasemantic poetry,” where nonsense words that sound like real words are used with a kind of syntactic correctness, while sticking to the usual semantic confusion, polysemy, and polyandry. In other words, he used non-words like words, to sound like words, to make you like words. Here is his most famous piece, “Il Ionfo,” from his collection “Gnòsi delle fànfole” (1978), with a parallel translation by Matilde Coloarossi. Part of the pudding here is the performance, and so here it is, performed by Gigi Proietti.
For our musical selection, I give you the December 4, 2020 installation of “Crap from the Past,” special nonsense edition [click here]. This is a production of Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber and is heard on 90.3 KFAI-FM, Minneapolis, and KFAI.org. Included are 27 tracks that focus on gibberish lyrics, with some old favorites (5, count ’em, 5 versions of “Mah na mah na”) and some that you didn’t know you knew, like the Banana Splitz theme, “Hubba hubba zoot zoot.” Because these are often simply gibberish or fake languages, they might not quite fit the stricter definitions of nonsense (forgive me, Wim), but they’re better than being attacked with a pointed stick.
Remember, let your wild prisencolinensinainciusol flag fly! Check out more in: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE
Indian Nonsense Happenings: Sukumar Ray on the syllabus–and Three Rays, a new collection.
Sandip Roy gives us an excellent article in The Hindu (June 19, 2021), on the genius of Sukumar Ray’s nonsense and the new volume called Three Rays, which collects Satyajit’s translations of his father and grandfather, Sukumar and Upendrakishore, in addition to his own work. We, the collective Nonsensical Norns (for which I speak occasionally on the Abstemious Ass’s Authority), are delighted also to hear that Sukumar Ray continues to break into the typically conservative Literature canon bubble in Indian Universities and Colleges (or at least those in West Bengal). Satyajit’s translations, by the way, are not exactly translations. In the volume Nonsense Rhymes (1970), the first set of Sukumar Ray “translations,” Satyajit calls them “transcreations,” as they tend to take more liberties than a conventional translation, in the spirit of making them relevant, melodious, and playful–and also as a response to the difficulty of translation when dealing with his father’s nonsense, which is so language-dependent. On the title pages below, we see both the word “translated” and “transcreated,” in addition to a Very Serious portrait of the transcreator, “anno aetatis six months.”
Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions, #6
Can it be so long, so soon, so often? Or as the ticket agent in Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories states, “So far? So early? So soon?”
Welcome to the GARQ #6, now with extra Q, and Q is for Quarantine, Q-bert, and the Quangle Wanquel Qweeque! A bit of a shame that it took the horrors of a deadly virus, an incoherent, ignorant, and malicious President, self-isolation, and a spring monsoon to bring us back to Gromboolia, but perhaps this is just what the planet ordered. I’ve always argued that nonsense would save the world, and I’m sticking to my buns! I mean, I’m bricking to my guns! I mean, I’m glicking to my suns!
I haven’t added to the Gromboolia Anthology of Nonsense in a while, but a little sample from my last additions should be edifactory to one and all.
Of note on the music front is Bill Wurtz, an American songwriter and videographer. I first found him via his popular “history of the entire world, i guess,” but only later learned that he wrote music. Silly music. Nonsensical music. You might check out this one on Sexy Pants. There are also many short videos, bibs and bobs of bizarre ideas, wee narratives, with micro-song clips, like this one on soap, or this one about tomato anxiety. See the Gromboolia Anthology for a few more choice choices, Chauncey! His website links to the many, many songs and videos.
On the literary front, we’ll feature one of those unfortunately rare beings, a female writer of nonsense. Oh, you say, there’s Anushka Ravishankar! Pawp, you say, there is Laura E. Richards! Spink, you say, there’s Doris Sanders (because, Clever Claudette, you’ve studied up on your Gromboolia Anthology)! Spadge, you say, there’s… oh have you run out? It’s not surprising. I have some ideas about why this might be, but that’s for another day. Meanwhile, to celebrate Margaret Mahy (1936-2012), prolific and crowned (with purplitude, as seen in this photo) writer for children. She’s a Kiwi, a treasure of New Zealand, but unfortunately not so well known outside of the antipodes. You might check out her book, Nonstop Nonsense, if you were so inclined. On the Gromboolia Anthology, I’ve posted a link to a short but fluffy documentary on her work.
Stay safe out there, Viral Vituperous Vultures! Check out more on: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE
Gromboolia Anthology Recent Quackisitions, No. 3
Our theme for this Quackisitions update is Bob Dylan. Of course, Dylan himself is a fine purveyor of nonsense, as we’ve seen in the Anthology with tunes like “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Such adventures are a kind of signature, and they have not gone unnoticed, in encomiums and drubbings over the years. But true nonsense cannot be mocked, and so those who use it only create further nonsense. The Anthology now includes a couple of these “tributes.”
The most notable is from Robert Wyatt, founding member of Soft Machine, and since then an old-before-his-time bearded weirdy, cranking out gentle, crackly craziness. His 1997 album Shleep tilted nonsensical (not only in its title), and Dylanical, with “Blues in Bob Minor.” On the same album, by the way, is his “The Duchess,” which nods to Lewis Carroll. The other Dylanesque tune is Weird Al Yankovic’s “Bob.” I have mixed feelings about this one, as it is just a series of palindromes on the cards. Still, as you’ll see, the whole video performance, with it reflection of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” seems to take it further, the video giving both more coherence and more implied, yet absent meaning. I’m leaving it in the Anthology for now–but you if you object, let me know! I’ll leave it here for now, dear Nonsensophiles.
Come back soon as your Mom, and check out more on: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE
Anushka Ravishankar has published her hiccups!
Anushka Ravishankar’s new nonsense book, Hic!, is not to be missed–especially if you own a hiccup or know one personally.
Here is a brief write-up, in Atlas Obscura, on the book, and also her strange and dark nonsense history, in which she once played badminton with The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense.