Western Canon in Brogue

Apologies for light posting. Here's something from the back of the cupboard...

Gertrude Stein

Her roses are roses are roses
Striking repetitive poses
By dissing Oaktown
With such a putdown
She gave all my neighbors neuroses.

Plato

Beneath a column, ionic
Talking to people, moronic
He tells us ad nauseaum
"Go to Gymnasium,
But keep it strictly Platonic!"

Dante

Below the world's surface he fell
Straight into the bowers of hell
He asked of the damned,
"How is this cursed land?"
Was told "Not bad, save for the smell!"

Homer

Squinting at rosy-fingered dawn
Odysseus said with a yawn,
"Quick! Go get his bride
back from Paris' side
'Cuz I left without watering my lawn!"

Robert Frost

Seen in the wood, two paths diverged,
One was clear, another submerged
Choosing with spite
I staid to the right
A week later I haven't emerged!

James Joyce

Stephen and Molly and Leopold Bloom
Living in Dublin as omphalic womb
On one fateful day
In their own quirky way
We see that their lives are a tomb

Emily Dickinson

In my room, as I lay dying
I saw a fly, lazily flying
It let out a buzz
I no longer was
But my words stubbornly keep trying.

Hemingway

Old man sets out to catch a big fish
Catch it he does, getting his wish
Out in the brine,
He reels in his line,
But of course, ends up as the dish

Sigmund Freud

The man in the chair is a wuss
That woman there wants a phallus
The answer's the same
Whatever your name
You will find it in Oedipus

Shakespeare

Romeo's blood falls on the locks
of his betroth'd, sleeping like rocks
I know they're all dead
Yet from what I've read
But for suicide, it would've been pox!

Gibbons

He stodgily set out to outline
The City of Rome's long decline
Their empire fell
His did as well
And we're left with a thousand page whine!

Oscar Wilde

The portrait of Dorian Gray
Gradually withered away
His soul was a mess
But I will confess
He still sounds a good roll in th' hay

Machiavelli

In giving sage advice to a Prince
His suggestions would make a man wince
But give them a try
You'll soon know why
We've had democracy ever since!

Nietzche

Writing on the power of wills,
slandering both gods and idylls,
What an intellect!
Too bad his affect
Drove him to tilting at windmills!

Virgil

His nation still needed a fib,
So like Adam, pulling his rib
He reached deep inside
Where his Muse must hide,
But found naught, so from Greeks he did crib

Kant

Konigsberg, a smart man did haunt
"You can't just do all that you want!"
It's all well and good
To do as he would
But who wants to end up like Kant?

Jonathan Swift

He traveled the world as his course
Returning to London his source
Old Gulliver said,
"I'd rather not wed,
Neigh, I gave my heart unto a horse!"

*Romeo

"Romeo!" cried the lovely lass,
"I dost believe, thou broke thine gas!"
"Please deign not to fret
Oh dear Juliet,
Twas simply love, burst from my ass!"

T.S.Eliot

[many thanks to Breslin!]
City in April, darkly Unreal
Pitiless minstrel, singing out shrill
By thunder-struck shore
The Wasteland is born,
A love song to make a man ill.

Snorri Sturluson

When people think of Nordic saga
It brings to their mind epic drama
But it's all a joke
I wrote about folk
Perfectly normal gone ga-ga...

William Bennett

A book of virtues, hoary and old,
Smug pulchritude from National Scold
He badgers and nags
But we sinning wags
Still buy all his books with our gold.

Noam Chomksy

He once led the study of grammar
Now he wields the punditry hammer
Everyone hides
such blame inside
We should all be thrown in the slammer!

Tom Clancy

With his prose like a butterknife keen
He regales us with toy and machine
Fiction for geeks
And techno-freaks
Attracted to a chromatic sheen!

Milan Kundera

His characters are prone to rambles
They're super-smart, erudite shambles
They love and they screw
Then fade out of view
Dying in intellectual brambles

Italo Calvino

His prose you say, a little bit tricky
And in its way, a trifle gimmicky
But soon you will find
He sticks in your mind
And your standards may seem finicky.

Walt Whitman

He sang quite a song of himself
Forsaking literary stealth
He let out a yawp
And published a flop
But now it's on everyone's shelf.

Grrr... John Steinbeck

In hard times the Joads took a bath
Setting them down an arduous path
The soil is dust
and men are unjust
But sowing the seedgrapes of wrath.

Evelyn Waugh

Simon and I, at Oxford, harried
Then at Brideshead, we often tarried
Lost him, I'm afraid
But his sister staid
And now we are soon to be married.

Doyle

He wrote of one named Sherlock
With brain and eyes keen as a hawk
Solving each crime
In super swift time
It's fun, but Victorian schlock.

Michel Foucault

All power is inter-textual
Controlling our fancies sexual
But try as you might
There's no hope in sight
Resistance is ineffectual

Karl Marx

With material dialectic
He foresaw class warfare so hectic
The poor would uprise
'Gainst those they despise
For capital is apoplectic

Franz Kafka

Sigh, his books were all uncompleted
His characters sorely mistreated
I long to find out
What comes about
I'd bet they all end up defeated.

Victor Hugo

It's a story of "Les Miserables"
Sad enough to make a man sob
But it turns out alright
At the end of the night
Redemption is found by Valjean.

Charles Dickens

An orphan with great expectations
Pursuing highest aspirations
The story of Pip
Delivered with zip
And soap opera machinations.

Ovid

Constantine, thanks to Eusebius
And Pliny is due to Polybius
But Ovid narrates
The tragic mistakes
Of Olympian gods with genius.

Tolkien

In making a world out of wholecloth
His feat is bold, I take my hat off
But where we depart
Is when you claim "Art,"
you will only elicit a scoff.

Joseph Conrad

We traveled upriver awhile
Our trip was really a trial
When we arrived
We were surprised
Kurtz waited with sickening smile.

C.S. Lewis

A wardrobe, a witch, and a lion
All set in a fantastic Zion
He meant to Portray
God's loving ways
But kids just think it's good writin'

Jane Austen

She writes in a tone most official
Of the pridefully prejudicial
The man is a creep
With virtue so deep
That her thingking seems to be wishful

Mary Shelley

Sure, it's a Gothic tale most brutish,
But as a lecture, hardly shrewish
When judging her book,
Just please overlook
The fact that the monster is Jewish.

Thomas Mann

Gustav, in Venice, played coy
Enamored of a beautiful boy
He followed around
Like a love-stricken hound
losing his life with great joy.

Hannah Arendt

Charged with intense criminality
Eichmann pled a technicality
"No, I can't explain why,
I'm a regular guy"
Of most revolting banality.

Martin Heidegger

The question about technology
Is really one of ontology
We're making of men
The means to an end
Based on ironclad tautology

George Orwell

By the year of nineteen-eighty-four
The world will have changed, you can be sure.
Men will be enslaved
By the truly depraved
And two plus two will not equal four.

Susan Sontag

Sitting and reading Susan Sontag
When my attention started to flag
As she talked about camp
My crotch got all damp
So instead I went clubbing in drag.

Lacan

Gazing into mirrored reflection
He had a flash of introspection
Shiny silver plate
can alienate
And lead to internal dissection.

Tennyson

As bullets rained all 'round like sleet
And casualties grew quite steep
They did not ask why
They were called on to die
But lay down their lives like good sheep.

Ibsen

Nora, a doll in miniature house
Living with Torvald, the selfish louse,
She had quite enough
And left in a huff
Taking nothing more than her blouse.

Melville

A narrator you may call Ishmael
Joins Ahab in pursuit of a whale
From vindictive funk
The Pequod is sunk
In one hell of a riveting tale.

Mark Twain

He spoke through the voice of Huck Finn
Who was a hillbilly dauphin
His time on a raft
is good for a laugh
And the essence of the American

Adam Smith

The economic actions of man
Are guided by invisible hand
with a gentle caress
It elicits our best
Consider it "Financial Onan."

William Burroughs

In the psychedelic Interzone
Narrative's subordinate to tone
With libidinal rage
The mind flees its cage
Engraving hope in subconscious stone

Primo Levi

Had it been me, I think I'd want no
clear memory. He it did haunt, though.
He penned a memoir
Of life in the war
With echoes of Ulysses' Canto.

Edgar Allen Poe

I find myself missing Lenore
At this time of night she would snore
And I find no relief
In that feathery creep
Whose one-track mind is starting to bore

Warning

Be wary of speaking in limerick
At first you think you're the mimic
But try and just stop
you'll see it's on top
You'd better check into a clinic.

A Plea For Help

My thinking is becoming rhythmic
Everything's coming out limerick
It's not all that bad
When spare time is had
But dreaming in verse is just sick.

Mickey Kaus

There's no harm in inclement weather
The jobless poor can eat shoe leather
I will not concede
We don't share a creed,
As liberals we stand together.

Vacation

My co-workers went on vacation
While I staid and slaved at my station
They brought me tchotchkes
But also disease
From far-flung corners of the nation