FullReads

What do you think of A. Dobson’s triolet:

Oh, see the Nude
Descend the Stair!
Fear not, oh, prude,
To see the Nude;
For by the rood,
She isn’t there!
Oh, see the Nude
Descend the Stair!

Of course, no one is a sweeter poetess than Miss A.A. Proctor:

Seated one day at my easel,
I was hungry and somewhat faint,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the tubes of paint.

I know not what I was drawing,
Or what I was painting there,
But I splotched a Cubic Symbol!
Like a Nude Descending a Stair!

It flooded the crimson canvas
With the gush of a broken dam;
And it lay in sticky masses
Like upset gooseberry jam.

It rioted blazing color,
Like love ballyragging strife;
It seemed the loquacious echo
Of our discordant wife.

It linked all Futurist meanings
Into one perfect cube,
And broke itself up into facets
Like a wreck in a Hudson Tube.

I seek, but I seek it vainly,
That vast, symbolic line,
That came from the head of the staircase
And entered into mine.

It may be that Pab Picasso
Has painted the thing before,
And it may be that only in Bedlam
I shall paint that Nude some more.

And now the admirers of Mr. Poe will enjoy this:

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom made of squares,
That a Lady lived whom you may know
As the Nude Descending the Stairs,
And the lady lived with no other home,
But those racketty-packetty stairs!

And the moon never beams
Without jarring the seams
Of those cubic triangular stairs;
And the earth never quakes
Without bringing the shakes
To those wigglety-wagglety stairs.

And neither the artists in circles above,
Or critics who view the debris,
Can ever dissever the Nude from the Stairs,
For both are so hobble-de-gee,
So hobble-de-wobble-de-gee!

Mr. A. Tennyson is quite frank in his opinions, and it would seem that he does not altogether admire the lady:

Lady Clara Stair de Stair,
Of me you shall not win renown.
You thought to charm the country’s heart
As you the staircase tumbled down.

At me you splashed; but unabashed,
I saw you in your paint attired;
You daughter of a hundred cubes,
You are not one to be desired!

Lady Clara Stair de Stair,
I care not for these wild etudes;
A simple Titian in a frame
Is worth a hundred Staircase Nudes.

Howe’er it be, it seems to me
It isn’t noble to be fools;
Fine arts are more than Futurists,
And simple lines than Cubist Schools.

At one meeting of The Re-Echo Club, it chanced that there was no one present but Omar Khayyam. He had mistaken the date, and came to the clubroom, only to find it empty. Absent-mindedly, he picked up paper and pen, and, on leaving, left behind these additional Rubaiyat:

RUBAIYAT OF WALL STREET

Now the New Hope reviving dying fires,
The Thoughtful Soul to speculate aspires;
And the lean Hand of Shylock and his Kin
Puts out some Money, which he gladly Hires.

Myself, when Young, did eagerly Frequent
Broker and Broke; and heard Great Argument
About it and about. Yet evermore
Came out far Shrewder than when in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And then I thought I’d sure be in The Know;
And this is all the Wisdom that I gained:
If you buy High, Quotations will be Low!

Some for the Glories of the System; Some
Sigh for the big Fool’s Paradise to come.
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Profits go,
Nor heed the Rumble of a Boston Drum!