There has to be a villanelle in that somewhere, and I'll work on it -- even though the trochee-iamb of "Mickey Spillane" is unpromising - maybe anapests? Or a catelectic line with a two-unstressed-syllable patter?
This is the story of Mickey Spillane
...that sort of thing?
Anyway, connections between poetry and Mickey Spillane won't let go of me. I'm working on a series of chapbooks based on film noir stills, and I suddenly remembered I had done a series based on Mickey Spillane paperback covers. I wondered if I could find them in a file somewhere, so I Google-Desktopped "Spillane," and the first place I was directed to was a list of literary contemporaries of Donald Justice.
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
"Mickey Spillane" is metrically a very common first pair of feet for the first line of a sonnet or any IP form, Tad.
ReplyDeleteMore than a third of Shakespeare's first 20:
III: Look in thy glass
VII: Lo! in the orient
VIII: Music to hear
XIII: O! that you were
XIV: Not from the stars
XVII: Who will believe
XIX:Devouring Time
And I'm looking forward to your noir poem(s).
"Devouring time" apparently devoured my ear. That one's standard iamb/iamb.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, of course. I was thinking of it at the end of a line, where the trochaic substitution in the penultimate foot can often sound more forced.
ReplyDeleteUnless, as I say, it's dactyl/anapest time:
I'll sing you the true tale of Billy the Kid,
I'll sing you the deeds that this young outlaw did....
Noir for the moment, until I figure out what to with Mickey Spillane, is left to my drawings.
ReplyDeleteAnother project I'm mulling over -- adapting Thomas Hardy as cowboy poetry.