(seriously phallic, so not to everyone’s taste)
The readings for the day, inspired by Max Vasilatos posting on Facebook about weird garden statues:
(#1) The Penisaurus Poems; there will eventually be acknowledgments of Edward Lear and Isaac Watts, respectively
The inspiration for these poetic eruptions was just one of those weird garden statues; from the beginning of my response to MV:
[Max wrote:] “There’s one that might land me in FB jail, though amazon thinks you can put it in your yard. I have known people with this sensibility.” — that would be the blue-headed WPODWO resin Dino-Dick (which, by the way, is clearly pretty small, though the company doesn’t say how small, only that it’s “compact”).
The potentially FB-poisonous image:
(#2) WPODWO’s Dino-Dick / Penisaurus lurking in a lawn (no, I haven’t been able to find out anything about the company); its head is indeed engorged in a hue of blue, and its tail is indeed green
The rest of my response to MV:
As you know, I have a collection of phallanimals, including a number of little Dickasaurus rexes, but none in such a fine color scheme (“engorged in hues of blue” — my take-off on the excellent Isaac Watts hymn line “arrayed in robes of light”). I would spring for the ca. $15 for the thing (including delivery from somewhere far away, probably China), but the company’s record on delivery times is really poor (and their estimated delivery time is a month as it is). I’ll content myself with the photo.
I have posted on this blog a number of times about my little (mostly plastic) phallanimals, including those below (with the names given them by their creators):
(#3) Dickousauruses
(#4) Phallosaurus
(#5) Dickobronts
The poetic heritage. Mid 19th-century nonsense verse and early 18th-century religious verse. The models for the two Penisaurus Poems (the first in a rocking rhythm, the second in a squarer rhythm):
(#6)
(#7) That’s the hymn on p. 120 in The Sacred Harp (Denson Revision, 1991 ed,); my 10/1/17 posting “Ecstasy” has a section on Chambers SH120 (with the music)
Excursus. In playing on the Watts text, I wanted to use enrobed and was startled to discover that the verb enrobe wasn’t in SH at all (there’s a concordance). The verb was in my head because (a) I’d posted just yesterday “Dr. Pozzi at Home” (painted by John Singer Sargent) in a bright red robe, a scarlet dressing gown; and (b) Valentine’s Day was just two days ago, and I’d been briefly besieged by ads and recipes for things enrobed in chocolate.
I wanted the (a) kind of enrobing, of course; from NOAD:
verb enrobe:[with object] formal dress in a robe or vestment.
The (b) kind of enrobing hasn’t yet reached NOAD; but from the draft additions (Dec. 2005) to OED2 for the verb enrobe:
transitive. Cookery. To provide with a coating, esp. one of chocolate; to coat, cover, or envelop. Usually in passive. [1st cite from 1915 All this deliciousness is enrobed in our pure chocolate blended with finely chopped peanuts.; cites are both American and British]
Sternly putting chocolate-enrobed things behind me, I went on a search for hymn tunes with enrobed in them, so that I could dirty things up by changing it to engorged. Immediately getting one good hit, and only one: from Our Father in Heaven: The Lord’s Prayer in a Series of Sonnets by William C. Richards (1886) — Sonnet 3: Hallowed be Thy name:
The Hallowed Name
We hallow Thy great name forevermore,
Thou, Who between the Cherubim dost dwell,
Enrobed in light of which no tongue can tell,
With glory girt, no mortal form e’er wore.
The hosts of Heaven bow down Thy throne before,
And breathe Thy name with love ineffable,
While trembling answers to their rapture swell
In streams borne heavenward from Time’s mortal shore.O name, that never may be lightly said,
How shall my sinful lips its utterance dare
With awe unblenched lest it be breathed to shame?
Sooner let speech upon my lips fall dead,
Than I forget my childhood’s living prayer,–
“Father in Heaven, hallowèd be Thy name.”
Enrobed in light of which no tongue can tell is a really nice line (and the evocation of Pentecost is wonderful), but the rest is in a high-Victorian diction / style / register that I wouldn’t touch, so I shifted Watts’s arrayed in robes to engorged (by way of enrobed), and then had to re-do Watts’s line completely. I must say that I’m really happy with engorged in hues of blue. But you probably aren’t interested in my creative process; well, this is an excursus.