Poem of the Fortnight: Horse-Feathers

Poem of the Fortnight: Horse-Feathers This time we take a look at a poem in the Digital Miscellanies Index that deals with death— surely one of the most common themes of literature— but does so through an unusual subject: the demise of an unnamed horse. It reads as follows: Here lies not in but on Earth’s Womb, An Horse expos’d without a Tomb: No Winding-sheet, not his own skin, Nor laid by any of his Kin. Yet was no Jade; Death had a Race, And took him for his sprightly pace. Now see his funeral Exequies, Th’Ravens in black do...

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Poem of the Fortnight: Blackness and Beauty

Poem of the Fortnight: Blackness and Beauty In consequence of a prolonged bout of flu that lifted only to make way for a severe attack of Christmas fever, I haven’t been able to publish a poem for over a month. With my apologies, here is a ditty from the DMI on the perfect theme to get the New Year off to a decent start...racism: Bess black as Charcoal, Was found in a dark-hole, With Kit at the Cat and the Fiddle; But what they did there, None safely can swear, Yet Gentleman, Riddle my Riddle. Troth I would be loath, Were...

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Poem of the Fortnight: Pandering to Pindar

This week we pause in our discussion of individual poems to examine, more broadly, a type of poem: the pindaric. The re-emergence of the pindaric in the seventeenth century and the relative frequency with which it appears in these miscellanies raises questions about whether we should include this label in the list of ‘genres’ on the DMI data-entry interface from which, at present, it is absent. In my last post, ‘Doggerel Fights’, we met with the pugnacious Pindar of Thomas Brown’s imagination who avenged himself against the feeble imitations...

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Poem of the Fortnight: Doggerel Fights

Poem of the Fortnight: Doggerel Fights This week— trouble on Mount Helicon! In another poem unearthed during data entry for A collection of miscellany poems, the poet Thomas Brown attacks the unspecified ‘Mr. D’ for his abuses against poetry, the classical tradition, and (worst of all) of Englishness itself: 1. Thou Cur, half French, half English Breed, Thou Mungril of Parnassus, To think tall lines run up to feed Shou’d ever tamely pass us. 2. Thou write Pindarics, and be damn’d, Write Epigrams for Cutlers; None with thy...

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Poem of the Fortnight: 'The Contented Whore'

This is the first of a series of fortnightly blog-posts exploring some of the most interesting and unusual poems that I (Rebekah King) have come across during my data-entry work for the DMI. Having recently graduated with a master’s degree in English Literature 1550-1700, I’ve become involved in the DMI in the capacity of a foot soldier to the captain-of-the-regiment that is Carly is herself. Over the next few months, I’ll be helping to build the database that will form the foundation of the final DMI site, cataloguing each miscellany and...

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