trans substantial

sorrynotsorry

sashayed:

sashayed:

sashayed:

lierdumoa:

sashayed:

sashayed:

My name is Calfe
& Im too young
to know yet what do 
with my Toung!

So till my Mom say
“Dont Do That!”
Ill stick it out
And lik this cat.

My little Calfe,
Im proud of yu–
yur living like
the Big Cows do.
Yur doing just
what Mom have said–
for yu lik cat,
and cat 

lik bred.

Bad meme execution. 0/5 stars.

These poems are supposed to be imitative of 17th/18th century middle English poetry (pre-dating dictionaries and formalized spelling conventions) not early 2000s chatspeak, not babytalk.

These poems are also supposed to be in iambic diameter, giving them a pleasing songlike rhythm. The above has inconsistent syllabic structure from line to line.

These attributes are clearly illustrated in the prime:

So tired of people on this website and their flagrant disregard for syllabic structure.

No respect for the craft.

1. first of all, how dare you. i would never, N E V E R, put forth a cow poem with inconsistent syllabic structure. these may not be my finest work, but the iambic dimeter is IMPECCABLE. check my scansion again and come back to me. I guess “know what do yet” is not ideal, but it falls within the constraints of the form. i’m genuinely appalled by this. i have SEEN inconsistent scansion in this meme, i do NOT approve of it and i have NOT done it. how dare you. HOW DAR EYOU!!!

Secondly: it is not absurd to suppose that the linguistic constraints of a Cow Poem would depend on the figure to whom Cow speaks. In the original (and perfect) “i lik the bred,” the narrative cow, like a Chaucerian non-characterized narrator, directs her speech to an imagined and unspecific listener; not to “the men,” who are characters within the poem, but to some more general audience. (See the Canterbury Tales prologue for an example of this voice in action.) 

Later, poem_for_your_sprog has Cow address contemporaries like “dog.” You will notice that the voice of Cow varies slightly, in speaking to Dog, from her voice in the original “I lik the bred.” WHY, then, can we not extrapolate that Calfe – who is, after all, a narrator of limited capacity, being only a Baby Cow with a Baby Cow’s simplicity – would have its own variant voice? And why, too, would Cow not speak differently to her own Calfe than she does to an animal peer, or to reverent imaginary auditors? These are experiments within an emerging form – flawed experiments, certainly, but not mistakes ipso facto. Again: HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!

my name is Cow,
and as yu see,
its worth yor tiyme
to studye me.
but if yu dont
like what yu red,

take 2 deep breths

and lik the bred.

(via sashayed)