a c-cough revolution (and all-new c-cough VII!)

It is without political design that I have, for the first time, subverted the original form of the chiasthmatic cough. The switch of subject from poet to non-poet is purely occasional, that is, motivated by today's occasion, which is the one-week anniversary of Below Dunster. Amid the Roman candles and other pyrotechnica I was inclined to make Below Dunster itself the subject of a c-cough--but how I resisted! For I recall the days when metric innovation and national upheaval were one, when formal novelty constituted a call not only for a new form of literature but for a new form of government, when monarchies were toppled by coffeehouse song-singers and cellar-corner verse-scratchers. I remember the Neo-Classical tenet that dependence on certain formal factors for the satisfaction of eternal rules in poetry is essential not only for poetic order but also for social stability, and that these rules are understood by all rational people. But just as this movement was built ironically on the rediscovery--and redistribution--of Aristotle's Poetics, so this post is built on a negation: the altered c-cough form is not attempted regicide. For as long as Slo Combe tarries Below Dunster, the poet is king of the chiasthmatic cough. And since wild plum groves have little power of locomotion, that will be a long time.

I trust the fears of the faithful have been assuaged. But I must further confess the relative obscurity of the anniversary cough in the previous post, and so, for once, rather than gloat in the ivory tower as many poets do, I will do what few have ever done, and supply an alternate. Thus, for those unschooled to General Sherman and to British regional dialects:


chiasthmatic cough VII

B-Dunster’s one-week birthday
The pruny infant’s hypedness
Bananas brown from UV-rays
Beach bums, from overripeness.