[438] Not my Best Side
Guest poem sent in by "Vijay D'silva" <vjvictor@>
I
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
II
It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.
III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.
-- U. A. Fanthorpe
|
There is a refreshing feel about the whole poem. I suppose when you look
at it, you could say it boils down to the story of a boy and a girl in a
painted world. I feel sorry for the dragon though. Why does it have to be
engulfed in that pathetic microcosm of our world just to enable another two
mentally superior apes to continue with their mundane existence?
Vijay
From: Meg Worley <meg@>
It's an interesting genre, this new-perspective-on-old-tropes thang.
(Other examples offhand: Gardner's *Grendel* and Ciardi's *The King Who
Saved Himself From Being Saved* in the medieval category, and Rhys's
*Wide Sargasso Sea* and somebody's [Coetzee?] *Foe* later on.) I tend
to read them as comments on the relationship between the present ("Ain't
we so postironic!") and that old stale past. --meg
From: "Petrie France" <F.petrie@>
I would like to know what you could tell me about the challenging
stereotypes in this poem.
blacktiger_666@
From: Rab1122@
BRILLIANT POEM - STUDIED IT AT SCHOOL AND THOUROUGHLY ENJOYED IT!!!!! ONE OF
THE BEST POEMS I'VE READ!!!!!
FROM RACHEL
From: UMAODEDRA@
does anyone have any information on the analysis of this poem for the GCSE
exam?
From: Dragon Dave <d.n.mckee@>
This poem had a marked effect on me when I was studying it at GCSE... essentially it boils down to three perceptions of a single event:
an vain (in the sense of beauty), detached dragon; a nymphomaniac virgin and an immature knight who is vain in the sense of believing
that *he* is the epitome of the best the world can offer.
It should be noted that this poem is associated with an painting by Uccello:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/WebMedia/Images/62/NG6294/eNG6294.jpg
From: "cheerfulsakib" <cheerfulsakib@>
does anybody have any notes on 'not my best side'? if so, pls mail me at
cheerfulsakib@
thanks
From: "The Happy Reaper" <p.carter@>
Yarg; I can't stand this poem. The whole New Generation, 'taking the
past and making it relevant by using 'surprising' voices,' thing has
been done once too often, and it was never anything much more than a
gimmick in the first place. It always feels fake to me.
Peter
From: "Celine" <celineandcats@>
I thought the peom was good, especially if you are looking at the
picture about which it was written as you read it (Saint George and the
Dragon). We also had to study it in our english class, and I enjoyed
doing that immensely. Even so, it is true the whole 'rewriting old
stories in a different way to point out the steriotypes used' is done
way too often.