I request a very talented poet to help me with this:
I need a song called, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Mammals" to be written to the tune of "How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria," sung by the nuns in Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey." I mean, the nuns in The Sound of Music. The less questions you ask, the better.
I will sing the song for you if you write it (if you write it well). I'm pasting the lyrics of the original below. It should be witty and use the names of various mammals. Or by "mammals" you could mean "humans" and then really politicize it. Are you up for the challenge?
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria
She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee
Her dress has got a tear
She waltzes on her way to Mass
And whistles on the stair
And underneath her wimple
She has curlers in her hair
I even heard her singing in the abbey
She's always late for chapel
But her penitence is real
She's always late for everything
Except for every meal
I hate to have to say it
But I very firmly feel
Maria's not an asset to the abbey
I'd like to say a word in her behalf
Maria makes me laugh
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!
Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say
How do you keep a wave upon the sand
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
When I'm with her I'm confused
Out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as weather
She's as flighty as a feather
She's a darling! She's a demon! She's a lamb!
She'd outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She's a riddle! She's a child!
She's a headache! She's an angel!
She's a girl!
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!
Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say
How do you keep a wave upon the sand
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
***
Side note:
I've been watching the BBC TV show The Lives of Mammals. So far I have watched episodes on insect eaters (like the anteater) and plant eaters (like slothes and tapirs). I have a friend coming over tonight to watch disk 2 of this show.
***
Well, now that we got that business out of the way, you should all know that Mark Lamourex's chapbook, Poem Stripped of Artifice is out.
It won The New School Chapbook contest of 2007. The judge was Deborah Landau.
I'm not sure if you can buy a copy or if they are free. If they are free, I would be happy to pick you up a copy and send it to you, just let me know.
I couldn't find individual poems online, but he has poems in the new/first issue of Fou: http://www.foumagazine.net/ML.htm
***
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5 comments:
Hmm. I read this whole post and I still don't know how to solve Maria. Do you think bourbon would do it?
Hmm, actually, now that I think about it, I think my joke would have been funnier in the form of an assertion, as in the following:
I solved Maria, all right. The answer was bourbon.
Actually, I only posted the first version of the comment because I'd gotten this idea that I would do a sort of "Dear Abby" thing, with you obviously being Abby and me asking about Maria. But then I realized there wasn't really a good way to communicate all that, since I didn't want to write "Dear Abby" because that doesn't make sense and I didn't want to just make up a name for you (though, now that I'm thinking about this, "Dear Julesy" might have worked, since it really is your name and you might have even gotten the joke too, but I didn't think of it so oh well) so I figured everything would be riding on the closing, like "Troubled in Trenton" or something, but then I couldn't think of a B-word to go with "Bushwick" that related in any way to what I wanted to write about Maria, other than "Bothered in Bushwick" but I thought that was too close to "hot and bothered" and I didn't want it to be a horny kind of joke, I was thinking more like "Worried" but the only place I could think of for that was "Worried in Wichita" and even though I wouldn't have minded pretending to be in some other city I know Wichita is in Nebraska so then I thought you might get distracted trying to figure out if I was referencing and/or ragging on Mathias in some way, neither of which of course would have been the case if I had done that but in the end I just thought it was better if I didn't (and actually, I guess I could have been "Worried in Williamsburg" but I didn't think of that at the time either) so I just bagged the whole "Dear Abby" theme and the question is what was left over, but I definitely think now I should have gone with the assertion, though, I guess that version of it also has a sort of horny quality that was what I was trying to get away from, but fuck it, because it really is much funnier.
anyway, that's what i was thinking.
"Bumbling in Bushwick" might work.
This whole joke would work much better if 1) I was famous and 2) I had a female poetry nemesis who had a 3 syllabul name I could substitute for Maria (or "the Mammals"). Like, if Elisa Gabbert was my nemesis, instead of a darling friend, I could sing, "How Do You Solve a Problem like Elisa?"
See what I'm saying. Not that I want a nemesis. Or "a problem."
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