Delia Sherman's Blog, page 4

Manner vs Matter: War Horse and The Enchanted Island

Last week, in the company of a good friend from out of town and her mother, we went to Lincoln Center twice.  Once to see War Horse at the Vivian Beaumont, and once to the Metropolitan Opera for The Enchanted Island.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that the two performances couldn't have been more different.  War Horse is a play about a horse and his boy, WWI, and trench warfare, full of barbed wire, gritty realism, and amazing full-sized horse puppets.  The Enchanted Island is a  retrofit Baroque opera which borrows its music from the likes of Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and its plot (such as it is) from The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's a glorious muddle of mis-matched lovers (including Caliban and Hermia) and anti-colonial sentiment, and includes such gems as a scene set in the Court of Posidon, a counter-tenor Prospero, and a big part for the witch Sycorax.  Nothing at all in common, right (except maybe being at Lincoln Center)?  Wrong.  At bottom, these two theatrical experiences are actually quite similar.  Both are highly mannered and theatrical; both are nostalgic; both depend for their greatest effects on theatrical magic rather than individual performances.  Both are highly entertaining, but not very emotionally profound.

I noticed this most with War Horse.  I don't mean to say I wasn't affected--the staging of Act II in particular was remarkable, and the characters of the Good German cavalry officer who trades his sword for a dead medic's red-crossed coat and cap and the French family he befriends (with the help of the titular horse Joey) are truly engaging.  But I couldn't help but notice that quite a lot of my reaction was to the puppets and the music (mostly contemporary to WWI, or Devon traditional--very lovely) and the remarkable animated pencil drawings projected onto a banner that looked like a piece of paper torn from a sketchbook, which helped to set the scenes. The actions and emotions of the merely human actors get swallowed up by the special effects and the huge, semi-circular Beaumont stage. I found the actor who plays Ted, the boy who trains and follows Joey to war, a whole lot less convincing than Joey himself, despite the puppet's eight legs and head-holder.  But that could also be the result of having to transpose the point of view from the horse to the people surrounding him.  I don't know.  In any rate, I didn't like the play itself nearly as much as I liked the production.  It wasn't silly; it wasn't offensive or stupid or BAD.  It was just kind of . . . undistinguished.  B work.  Nothing wrong, nothing transcendently right.

Still well worth seeing, though.  Those projected pencil drawings are almost as prime as Joey and Topthorn.  Oh, and the trenches.  The trenches were remarkable.

But not as remarkable as the scene in Poseidon's court in The Enchanted Island.  Picture Placido Domingo in ice-blue and silver Classical Armor, a natty little beard, and a splendid shimmery velvet cloak, sitting on a seashell throne, with three mermaids suspended above him and the entire chorus of the Metropolitan opera, done up in High Baroque finery and languidly waving their arms in counterpoint to the music (which I suspect might be Handel, but my Baroque is rusty).  The scene lasts maybe 20-25 minutes, with those poor suspended mermaids waving away the whole time, looking just a little ridiculous.

But then, the whole thing is a little ridiculous.  It's supposed to be.  Caliban is made up like KISS, for pete's sake.  The Midsummer lovers (shipwrecked while on their double honeymoon) appear in artfully deconstructed 18th C. costumes.  Storms and magic are created courtesy of the magic of digital projection and lighting.  Ariel's magic put me strongly in mind of Tinkerbell's little sparks of light.  And the fix-up plot, full of thefts of dragon's blood and love potions that sometimes work and sometimes don't and Sycorax vowing revenge and Ariel seeking help from Poseidon to find Ferdinand and Caliban looking for love in all the wrong places, and the deus ex machina ending, in which Poseidon scolds Prospero for doing to Sycorax what his evil brother did to him, isn't really supposed to make sense.

But this is opera, and Baroque opera at that.  The music is really all about the arias, which are sung by individuals.  Prospero (sung by countertenor David Daniels) is disconcertingly sweet-voiced and gentle, even when he is mixing down with Sycorax (Joyce DiDonato), who basically wipes the stage with him, vocally, morally, and sartorially.  Lucas Pisaroni makes Caliban a sweetly angsty emo-monster, and Lisette Oropesa as Miranda looked every bit as wide-eyed and clueless as her music suggested she was.  It was all a lot of fun, and should bring in the punters a new and wider audience.  I enjoyed it a lot.  The three hours it took really, truly sped by.  I love Baroque music to bits, and the staging and direction and everything were A+ work.  But it never really touched my soul. 

Wit

In 1998, when New York was still our secondary relationship, we happened to be in town at the same time as Ellen's parents (I think it was probably Passover).  In any case, we took them to see Margaret Edson's Wit at the MCC Theater.  We were sitting up by the ceiling, in little, tiny seats, looking almost directly down on the stage.  What I remember about the play was that it wasn't as much about John Donne as I'd hoped it would be, that Edson's definition of 17th Century wit wasn't mind, and that Virginia Bearing, the play's central character (played by Kathleen Chalfont), put me strongly in mind of my own graduate school professor of metaphysical poetry, who scared me into regular asthma attacks.  I also thought I caught a whiff of an anti-intellectual, smart, well-educated women are abrasive old maids kind of thinking.  And that, at the end of the day, The Runaway Bunny is a more important book than Donne's Holy Sonnets.

Wit has just opened on Broadway, in the same theater where we saw Venus in Fur earlier this winter, with Cynthia Nixon (of Sex in the City fame, as if I needed to tell you that) in the Chalfont role.  I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to see it, but Ellen did, and you know me.  So we went last night.

I liked it much better than I had the first time.  Perhaps it's that Nixon's Virginia is charismatic as Chalfont's was not.  Perhaps it's that the supporting cast treated her with real respect.  Perhaps it's just that, having seen it before, I could pay more attention to the actual text and less to what was going to happen next.  And what I saw was a beautifully-crafted, tightly-woven examination of the ways in which art mediates between intellect and emotion, life and death, God and humanity.  John Donne and Margaret Wise Brown are both great artists writing about fear and death and abandonment and a love that passes understanding.  The Holy Sonnets speak to those who revel in the beauty of intellectually challenging abstractions; The Runaway Bunny speaks to those who revel in the beauty of the familiar and the everyday.  Which, at the end of life, is everyone.  We need both Donne and Brown.

I cried buckets.  I'm getting a little teary thinking about it.

Yep.  Good play.  Harrowing, but satisfying.

Cynthia Nixon acts the hell out of Virginia Bearing.  She's dry, wry, amused, bitter, raging, defended, and finally, vulnerable.  She's very like Donne, in fact. I might have cried in her class (she's not a kind teacher, and her standards are immovably high), but I don't think I would have had asthma attacks.  And I wouldn't have been bored for a nanosecond. I found myself wanting to raise my hand and argue her interpretation of Holy Sonnet IX (even though I probably know the wrong text).  She is ably assisted by her supporting cast.  I particularly liked Greg Keller as Dr. Jason Posner, who is as intellectually passionate about cancer cells as Dr. Bearing is about John Donne, and (again like Dr. Bearing) doesn't quite understand that other people have feelings and things going on in their lives that are as central to them as his work is to him.  And even if he did understand, he still wouldn't know what to do about it.  Carra Patterson brought a real individuality and her own line in dryness to the requisite Caring Black Nurse.  And Suzanne Bertish (who I remember playing Fanny Squeers in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby w-a-y back in 1982; she was also in Red Dwarf) was FANTASTIC in the small but vitally important role of the professor who taught Dr. Bearing the importance of intellectual rigor.

Nixon is a cancer survivor herself, as is the show's director, Lynne Meadow.  How she can bear to put herself through that performance night after night and twice on Sundays, I can't imagine.  But I'm sure glad she does.

Nebula Nominations Time

I'm rather surprised at how many stories of mine came out this year--although I shouldn't be, since last year was very much taken up by writing them.  By the strange and wonderful Nebula word-counts, they're all novelettes (between 7,500 and 17,500).  For those who are interested, "Ghost" is the longest at 10,400.  If you haven't read it yet, you can click on the link below.

“The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor,” Steampunk!, ed. Grant & Link, Candlewick Press, 2011

“Flying.”  Teeth, ed. Datlow & Windling, HarperCollins, 2011

“How the Pooka Came to New York City,”  Naked City, ed. Datlow, St. Martin’s Press, 2011

I am of two (or more) minds about blowing my horn for my own work.  On the one hand, this is the 21st Century, and that is the way things are done here.  On the other, I'm more of a 19th Century girl.  Still and all, these are my babies.  And I'd be a terrible fiction-parent if I didn't push them out onto the public stage one more time, with earnest assurances that I love them all equally and am proud as Punch at how they turned out.

You can only nominate for the Nebula if you are an active SFWA member.  If you are, here's the ballot.  All nominations are due by February 15th.

My novel The Freedom Maze (Big Mouth House) is eligible for the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Novel, a sort of companion to the Nebulas.  The Nebulas and their rules are well-explained here.

Apology

I'm a bad dog.  I've been neglecting my blogging duties.  We weren't going to the theater all that much, all our traveling was family-related, to places I'd been before (plus, I got sick in Florida, and the inside of a time-share condo is of limited interest--take my word for it), I was battling a story that seemed determined to defeat me, I got caught up in the instant-gratification of Twitter and Facebook.  The usual excuses, in fact:  too busy, too distracted, too out of words.

After all these years, I know perfectly well that promises of being better in the future are worth considerably less than the machine I'm typing on.  But I do have 3 plays to tell you about (and have had some time to think about how I feel about them, which can only be a Good Thing), and good news to impart (I finished the story, for instance, and it doesn't stink.  At least it was bought by the anthology I wrote it for, so I'll call that a win).  And I miss checking in with you.

OK.  Off to the chiropractor (he's dealing with an injury I've had for 20 years, and it's much better now, thank heaven and him) and some errands, and then it's home and PLAY REVIEWS.  Because I really need to get what I thought of War Horse and The Enchanted Island off my chest.

Porgy and Bess

I love Gershwin.  I'm not a big jazz fan in the usual run of things, but I grew up with Rhapsody in Blue and  Porgy and Bess and American in Paris  playing in the background (in repertory with Scott Joplin's rags and Tosca and an album of Hawaiian tourist tat whose title and artist I have blessedly suppressed), so his rhythms and melodies are imprinted on my soul.  Oddly, I don't know the opera itself very well--I wasn't paying a lot of attention, my parents' record only had the Greatest Hits on it and none of the dialogue, it wasn't Joan Baez or Donovan.  Up until 2000, when I saw it at the New York City Opera, I didn't even know the story.  

The City Opera did it (reasonably enough) as a classic opera, which means that the psychology of the characters, the sense of the story, the pacing, everything, takes a back seat to the music. (This is where I assure any operaphiles reading this that I mean no disrespect to opera or to the delicate nuances of Tosca or CioCio-San's psychology.  But I believe that opera works because it deals with archetypes rather than actual individuals, which is why you can have a silly libretto and a great opera.  The music IS the psychology.  And when I figure out what I mean by that, I'll let you know.)

Anyway.  I'd heard a certain amount of fuss over this Porgy when it opened this summer in Cambridge at my beloved ART. Stephen Sondheim hated what Diane Paulus did to it, on the theory that the piece wasn't broke until she tried to "fix" it.  Some critics liked the ART production, some did not.  Words like "PC" and "confused" and "anxious" and "unfocused" were bandied about.  All agreed that while Audra McDonald was worth the price of admission, the production itself was problematical.  All of which made me want to see it even more.  Also, our Theater Date of the Week, Rani Graf, in town with his sister and mother on a winter holiday, was interested in it.  So Ellen got TDF tix for us all, and we went.

First crack out of the box, we find little notes in our programs announcing that the part of Bess will be played tonight by Alicia Hall Moran.   As the lady behind us said to her companion (a relative, almost certainly), "The poor lady's allowed to get sick, isn't she?", but still, a disappointment.  The Crab Man had been similarly struck down, and my guess is that Porgy and maybe Clara are going to be the next to succumb to the Cast Crud.  Or maybe their relatively low-energy performances were occasioned by having done two shows over the weekend, plus a Monday matinee (who ever heard of a Monday matinee?), making 6 shows in three days.  In any case, the whole cast seemed tired--with the notable exceptions of David Alan Grier as Sporting Life and the aforementioned Alicia Hall Moran, who had all the understudy's nervous energy and then some.  She didn't have that star quality that makes an audience fall in love with an actress, but she was still a lovely Bess--vulnerable, hopeful, warm-hearted, defiant, ultimately betrayed by her fear and her addiction.  And she didn't overwhelm the other actors the way McDonald apparently does (if reviews of the Cambridge production are to be believed), so I feel as if I might have gotten a slightly more objective perspective on the production than I would have otherwise.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

And the play itself?  Well, it feels a lot more like a musical than an opera, which is what Paulus is going for, so that's no surprise.  People talk, then burst into song, then talk again.  This highlights how short the most of the arias are, relatively speaking--two or three lines of lyric repeated twice or three times.  Rather than melodic interruptions in a long musical line of recitative, they're more like little islands in a sea of words and dance music. The effect of this is to make the story stand out more, which is fine--it's a good story and a moving one.  The problem is that it forces the actors to work a whole lot harder to make the show hang together, to flow smoothly from moment to moment.  Watching it, I sometimes I felt myself wondering who I should be looking at or how I was supposed to be feeling--or whether Norm Lewis was getting massages every day to counteract the effect of holding his leg and hips like that for hours at a time.  Still, Philip Boykin as Crown was genuinely terrifying, and NaTasha Yvette Williams as Mariah and Bryonha Marie Parham as Serena were gloriously real and convincing.

As far as the much-vaunted overhaul of story and details are concerned, I don't know the show well enough to judge.  Of the things I did notice, I have to say that I do not mourn the loss of Porgy's goat-cart, and very much approve of Bess's increased agency.  I love the dancing (although it seemed a little specifically African for Charleston in the 30's, but that could just be my ignorance talking), and the orchestra is wonderful.  In short, The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess  may not be the traditional, canonical Porgy and Bess, or even the definitive revival, but it's certainly a very fine night at the theater--fine enough so that we might go again, if it turns up on TDF.  Because, good as Ms. Moran was (and she was very, very good), I'd like to see McDonald.  And maybe take a look at the original book beforehand, so I can see if I'm right about some of the lines they added.

Double Header: Seminar and On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Yesterday, we had a Theatrical Blow-Out:  Two plays in one day.  Our excuse was that Ellen's Israeli publisher, Rani Graf, is in town and loves theatre and we wanted to get together with ellen_datlow and Betsy Mitchell, (plus a little holiday celebration and relaxation).  And there were TDF tix.  We lunched, all together, at a nice Thai place on 9th Ave and 47th Street whose name escapes me, and then headed off to the Golden Theater for the matinee (since when are there Friday matinees?  she asked curiously) of Seminar.

The experience was a mixed one.  On the one hand, I enjoyed it.  It's a comedy about writers--mainstream writers, New Yorker-type writers, Yaddo and MacDowell Colony-going writers, literary writers.  You know, Real Artists.  And it's as mordant and nasty and gimlet-eyed as all hell.  What's not to like.  Also, it's got a wonderful cast of energetic, focused, extremely accomplished actors.  Lily Rabe plays the central female role, "I'm not a feminist, I'm a writer" Kate, who hosts the writing seminar of the title in her father's huge UWS rent-stabilized apartment, where she seems to live alone with some very nice modernist furniture, a large bar, and not that many books, shelved by color and size.  She plays her with ferocity, with humor, with vulnerability, with verve, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her.  Except, of course, when Alan Rickman was on-stage, because, you know, Alan Rickman.

It's not primarily a Snape thing.  I fell for him when I saw him a million years ago in Liasons Dangereuses in London.  The man's got tremendous range, and he's very good at showing the vulnerable underbelly of even the most powerfully dangerous characters.  He's not afraid of being unlikable, which is a rare thing in an actor, and that's a good thing, since Leonard is very, very, very hard to like--I'd say impossible, if it weren't for the fact that some members of our party did like him, or at least sympathize with him.  I did not.  Which brings me to the mixed part of the experience.

I didn't actually think the play was very good.

Oh, it had excellent moments.  I very much liked the slightly self-conscious wit of the dialogue, ranging from the intellectual pomposity of the well-connected aspiring New Yorker writer Douglas to Lily's acerbity, to Martin's defensive verbal smoke-screen to Leonard's self-aggrandizing foulness.  I got to feel smug about my own genre and colleagues and teaching philosophy while watching everybody on stage clawing at each other like (as Leonard put it) feral cats fighting over a rotten fish head.  I loved Lily's ringing speech about women writers and how they are still treated by the literary establishment, from reviewers to publishers.  But I was not so much with the fact that the sole non-WASP character is a Chinese woman who also flashes her tits and hops into the sack with both Leonard and Martin (the latter for no reason that I could see except that he is the designated Real Artist of the group), and doesn't even bridle when Leonard calls her and her work "exotic" in that very special way.  And I felt that Lily had a personality transplant in the last scene, and not a good or interesting one.  And I HATED that the only characters who get to be Romantic, in the sense of suffering for their art and being super-sensitive because they are Great Artists and Felt Things More than common folk, are both guys.  The women?  Oh, they're talented.  They'll have careers writing sexy short stories and ghostwriting gritty prison memoirs.  But they're not Real Artists.

And this play was written by a woman.  There is no font big enough for the sigh I am heaving.  I'm disappointed in you, Teresa Rebeck, is all I have to say.

Oh, and I don't think it's necessary to reduce a student into a damp puddle to get them to write great prose.  Sheesh.

I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Dinner was a pre-theater special at a wonderful (if middling pricey) Japanese restaurant called Sugiyama.  We feasted on boiled octopus with sweet miso sauce and toban (thin slices of beef cooked on a sizzling hot platter) and a wonderful grapefruit and wine jelly.

And then we went to On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.

You know, I was bored.  Possibly, I was overstimulated and/or had filled my quotient of fluffy silliness with Priscilla and/or was suffering from a Seminar-induced mental hangover.  Certainly the cast was great--Harry Connick, Jr. as the abusive psychiatrist Mark Bruckner, David Turner as his victim patient (also called David), Jessie Mueller as David's former incarnation, Melinda.  Mueller was incandescent.  Turner and Connick, less so--I'm guessing they were under the weather, maybe colds.  The sets were pretty spectacular, the costumes kind of orange.  And the play?  Well, silly.

It always was, Ellen tells me (I never saw it, either as a play or a movie).  And I usually like silly just fine.  I guess my problem here is that my belief never even got off the ground. The argument of the plot is that an unusually suggestible young gay man, afraid of everything (except cancer, apparently), goes to a psychiatrist for help in stopping smoking.  The psychiatrist (who is still mourning the death of his wife 3 years ago) regresses him (by accident) to his former incarnation as a jazz singer in the early 1940's, and falls in love with her.  Wackiness (predictably) ensues.  There is a happy ending, with the young man moving in with his inexplicably devoted boyfriend and the psychiatrist laying aside his wedding ring and finally noticing the foxy Dr. Sharone who has been making googly eyes at him for 2 acts.

I didn't believe a word of it.  I didn't believe that a man could get away with canoodling with another man on the deck of the Circle Line in 1975 without getting arrested.  I didn't believe a straight man would fall in love at first, um, contact, with a woman, however spirited and interesting, who is not only not physically present (that happens all the time over the internet), but in an unequivocally male incarnation.  I didn't believe the Institute doesn't fire his ass in the middle of Act 1.  I didn't believe David's boyfriend isn't suspicious until his roommate spills the beans. Yes, I know it's a piece of fluff, and we're mostly there for the music, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert doesn't make any sense either.  But I loved the one and was mildly irritated by the other.  There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert

It's been a long dry spell here, theatrically speaking.  There has been much writing going on, and even more shoveling through papers so we can find things.  Also, launching The Freedom Maze and the Swordspoint audio book.  And the odd con.

We haven't even seen any movies.

So when tickets for Priscilla Queen of the Desert showed up on TDF last week, we were on them like sequins on a bustier.  We'd been talking about getting together with lagringa , so we got tickets for her, too.  There was a party beforehand, all eggnog and cookies (I baked spice molasses cookies for it) and bright lights, so we were in the mood for fun.

And we got it.  With little sparkles and streamers and ruffles and pink, pink, pink EVERYWHERE.  I mean, I've seen the movie, and loved its unapologetic over-the-topness and tone of irreverence and general in-your-facitude, so I thought I had some idea what I was in for, except for the part about the music.  Oh, I knew it was going to be a juke-box musical, with Great Hits of the Eighties, glammed and camped to a farethewell, but there's knowing and there's experiencing.  My dears, it was so over the top, you couldn't see it without a telescope, although you might well have caught the glitter reflecting on our dull world below.  Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner more than deserve the Tony they won for their costumes, which range from dancing paintbrushes to a sheath made entirely of orange flip-flops to some genuinely beautiful show-girl plumes-and-spangles and Bernadette's ladylike ensembles. 

And what about the show itself?  Well, it's silly, it's sentimental, and it's dated.  There are scenes of almost stunning tastelessness, most notably an Aborigine in an orange lame tunic and body paint, followed by three pairs of tourists:  Germans in lederhosen, Scots in kilts and sporrans, and Japanese with cameras, flashing and bowing.  The story doesn't quite make sense, the songs don't always map very clearly onto the action, and the choreography was old in 1987.  Tick's relationship with his son is so heartwarming it's almost nauseating, and the outback Vietnam vet Bob is far too good to be true.  And yet, for me, for us, it worked just fine.  We laughed, we giggled, we howled.

Part of it was the acting--everybody out there clearly was throwing his heart over the moon.  Tony Sheldon as Bernadette discovering that she wasn't as old as she thought she was was particularly lovely, but all the leads were wonderful.  The trio of women singers who actually did most of the singing the leads were lip-syncing to were splendid, especially since they did most of it suspended high above the stage.  And the boy who played Tick's son was adorable, and did an honest and straightforward job of a rather one-note part.  But it isn't just that.  I think it's that the show manages to be simultaneously genuinely naughty and genuinely nice, truly bitchy and truly good-hearted, big and splashy and observant of the little things that persuade an audience that (all evidence to the contrary) they're watching real people with real emotions.  No, it's probably not Great Art.  But it's Great Good Fun, and that, my dears, is nothing to be sneezed at.

Guest Blog!

Malinda Lo asked me to do a guest blog on Diversity in Y.A. Literature  If you haven't read it before, it's a great blog, developed by Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon.  Here's their statement of intent:

DIYA is a positive, friendly gathering of readers and writers who want
to see diversity in their fiction. We come from all walks of life and
backgrounds, and we hope that you do, too. We encourage an attitude of
openness and curiosity, and we welcome questions and discussion. Most of
all, we can’t wait to have fun sharing some great books with you!

And they succeed.  I've read some wonderful posts on this blog, including an interview with Cassandra Clare and a thoughtful article on American Indians and Diversity in Young Adult Literature.  Check it out.  And you can check my post on Freedom Maze, too.

When I began writing The Freedom Maze,
back in 1987, I didn’t intend to write a book about race. I intended to
write a book about time travel and a shy, bookish girl who learned that
adventures are very different to read about than to live. I set it in
Louisiana because I like Louisiana and have spent a certain amount of
time down there when I was a child, visiting my mother’s family. I sent
my heroine back to 1860 because I’m interested in societies on the edge
of war, and not so much in war itself.

Readings!

As the Scheduling Gods will have it, I am reading two days in a row this week.  Once for 30 minutes, once for 5.  The NYRSF gig is our Traditional Family Night Reading, with Claire Wolf curating.  Ellen will read from her strange and wonderful Christmas story, "Dulce Domum," published in Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse 3.  I'll read from Freedom Maze.  It ought to be fun.

12/6 - 7 PM
NYRSF Annual December Family Reading w/ Ellen Kushner
at Soho Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street


12/7 - 6 PM
TEEN AUTHOR READING NIGHT
at Jefferson Market Branch NYPL
425 Avenue of the Americas

with/
Cecil Castellucci, First Day on Earth
Margie Gelbwasser, Inconvenient
Andy Marino, Unison Spark
Julia Mayer, Eyes in the Mirror
Marie Rutkoski, The Jewel of the Kalderash
Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze

Pronunciation Poem

frostokovich , who often sends me things I should know, sent me this.  It enlivened my morning; hope it enlivens yours.  You have to read it aloud to get the full effect.

Wednesday, 14th October 2009 by Nabilah MJ

(This is not my poem)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!