“The Isle of Dogs” is a story in my collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. In it, a group of scholars investigate the play of that name, by Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe, which was suppressed and is now lost. The French play mentioned here, Caquire, is also real, but its use in the story is as a red herring. Red herrings are, after all, used to throw dogs off the scent; Nashe’s first work after The Isle of Dogs was Lenten Stuffe, which is, among other things, a book about red herrings.

Here’s how it begins.

THE ISLE OF DOGS

It was a late October afternoon, overcast and growing chillier by the minute. I decided to stop in at Red’s bookstore on my way home, to warm up and browse for a bit. And besides, I hadn’t seen Red in a while.

The bookstore was certainly warm, though even more cluttered than the last time I’d seen it, with even more stacks blocking the aisles. Red greeted me in his usual gruff but amicable way, and we exchanged a few uninspired observations on local politics. I never knew his real name; everyone called him Red because of his hair and politics, both of which, as his customers liked to joke, had grown thin and grizzled with age.

Once we had aired our usual scorn for our elected officials, and Red had groused about his latest aches and pains, I searched through the shelves, not neglecting the piles that grew, like paper stalagmites, from the floor. I thumbed through some Perec, some Addison, and Bullen’s edition of George Peele. My attention was eventually drawn to a small tattered volume, stuffed atop other books on a crowded shelf. It was old, and in poor condition, badly stained and missing more than a few pages. On opening it, I found a French play in verse, apparently devoted entirely to scatology. Most of the characters suffered from diarrhea, and the author specified that they wear costumes soiled with large stains. I was intrigued. Was it ever performed? Was it some precursor to Jarry? It was fairly expensive, though, especially given its condition, so I noted the title and author, and decided to look it up once I got home: Caquire, by Charles Decomble, published in Lyon by “Les Cyniques” in 1730. I did buy the Peele, and said goodnight to Red, earning his usual comically exaggerated grunt.

Once home, I searched the internet, and found a reference to Caquire in Pierre Gustave Brunet’s invaluable Anthologie scatologique, from 1862. Brunet quoted several lines from the beginning, as well as the stage direction (if you will excuse my translation), “He makes a great turd in his hand, which he sharpens into the form of a dagger,” and the remark at the end, “The table of contents is useless: there is only one thing in this work.” However, Brunet also noted that it was a parody of Voltaire’s tragedy Zaïre, and that it was credited to a M. Vessaire, obviously a pseudonym, and speculated that the real writer was either a certain Coste, or Comberousse.

A rollicking fairy tale told with stringent poetic constraints! Here are the first six stanzas of thirty-three.

BARON AARON

The Baron Aaron, though of great nobility,
Did not appear particularly noble.
His face was red and round, his features mobile,
His body squat and scot-free of agility.

His intellect was frivolous and trivial;
He wasn’t ranked as one of nature’s smarties.
He spent his nights in masquerades and parties,
For he was unabashedly convivial.

He liked to party in the commissariat,
Where he made merry with the joyful gentry.
Beside the entryway, he kept a sentry
To pour out sherry for the proletariat.

The sentry was an adolescent layabout
Whose name was Darrin, and he had a sweetie.
He used his bayonet to write graffiti
About her charms, which he had lots to say about.

The object of his reveries was Beverly,
Who polished all the silverware and pewter.
She wasn’t very smitten with her suitor,
But then, he didn’t court her very cleverly.

He’d offer her a daisy or geranium,
Then scurry off with an embarrassed titter.
She’d drop the tattered token in the litter,
Persuaded he’d had trauma to the cranium.

The Pope’s Mustard-Maker is now available from Black Scat Books! Translated by Doug Skinner!

Le Moutardier du pape was the last work that Alfred Jarry finished, a few months before his death in 1907. It was one of many operettas he worked on in his last years, and one of the few he finished: a bawdy three-act farce loosely based on the medieval legend of Pope Joan, with a huge cast and lively songs bubbling with rhymes and wordplay.

Readers who know Jarry only from Ubu or his novels may be surprised that he wrote operettas, but his are fully Jarryesque, with his usual gusto for smutty jokes, legend, folklore, puns, wild invention, and popular theater. In his hands, Pope Joan becomes Jane, who runs off with her lover and disguises herself as pope. How will she pass inspection on the slotted chair? What will she do when her husband shows up? And has there ever been another production number celebrating the spiritual virtues of enemas?

This is the first translation of this major work! I also provide an introduction and notes, and scrupulously rendered all of Jarry’s rhyming verse into rhyming verse. Available from Amazon or Black Scat Books.

I set this short poem by Ezra Pound when I was 19. The poem is one of Pound’s Provençal translations, from an anonymous troubadour; my setting favors fourths and fifths.

People seem to like epiphanies.

EPIPHANIES

I walked out to the back acre
Where the hawthorn climbed shyly over the sagging fence
Like a little girl at a birthday party
I looked off to the east
At the darkening clouds
And realized
Why my mother was never home on Sunday

I walked out into the anxious city
Where used Toyotas honked at sad-eyed drunks
Like a goat that needed milking
I looked up at the tall buildings
With their winking neon
And realized
Why my father always kept his desk locked

I walked out on the open farmland
Where the young green corn rustled in the wind
Like a truck with a stalled motor
I looked down at my threadbare jeans
And saw my fly was open
And realized
Why the farmer’s kids were laughing

I don’t know what to do with these epiphanies
Perhaps I’ll try to market them at Tiffany’s

I’m currently translating Alfred Jarry’s operetta Le Moutardier du pape for Black Scat Books; it should be out later this year. I’m translating Jarry’s rhymed verse as rhymed verse; it always requires some compromise, but I hope the result is more faithful than a literal, unrhymed rendition would be (and more faithful than Jarry’s own rhymed translation of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”!). Jarry called his operettas his théâtre mirlitonnesque, his “kazoo theater,” and his verse is suitably lively, filled with rhymes, alliteration, assonance, wordplay, and varied meters. The subject is the medieval legend of Pope Joan; Jarry turns it into a bawdy farce, and Joan becomes an Englishwoman named Jane.

Here’s an aria from the end of the first act, in which Jane’s husband, Sir John of Eggs, describes his runaway wife to the pope, and gradually recognizes her. I’ll give the first stanza in the original, so you can see what I’m up against.

Elle a de tout petits petons,
Petits, petits… comment peut-on
A sa pantoufl’ de Cendrillon
Trouver la paire?
Petits, petits… hé mais, Saint Père
–Que m’excuse Sa Sainteté
De la très grande liberté,
Successeur du princ’ des apôtres–
Petits, petits… comme les vôtres.

I
She has such pretty little feet,
So elegant and so petite,
No Cinderella could compete
Or could compare.
But Holy Father, if I dare,
And pray excuse my forwardness,
I must confess, Your Holiness.
Successor to Saint Peter’s throne,
Those little feet… are like your own.

II
And when she smooths her satin skirt,
Her finger’s such a little flirt,
So debonair, and so alert
For an affair.
A little finger… if I dare,
And pray excuse my forwardness,
I must confess, Your Holiness,
Successor to Saint Peter’s throne,
A little finger… like your own.

III
Her waist is like a shoot in spring,
A scepter worthy of a king,
Her belt is like a narrow ring
That brings despair.
So narrow, narrow… if I dare,
And pray excuse my forwardness,
I must confess, Your Holiness,
Successor to Saint Peter’s throne,
So narrow, narrow… like your own.

IV
If once again I saw those eyes,
If to their level I could rise,
So somber, wicked, wild, and wise,
A savage lair…
But Holy Father, if I dare,
And pray excuse my forwardness,
I must confess, Your Holiness,
To put it plain…
(Pointing to the POPESS.) But you are Jane!

Here’s another new poetic constraint: the anagram rhyme. As the name says, anagrams are treated as rhymes. Here are seven examples:

Whenever we go out, the post
Beside the park is still the spot
Where our retriever always opts
To tug upon his leash and stop.

The life of urban man is tame:
He earns his wage; he cheers his team;
He swigs his beer; he eats his meat;
He quarrels with his chosen mate.

When he complained about the rates,
The agent shot him with a taser.
A crowd of idlers stopped to stare
And ridicule him for his tears.

The kitchen strictly must debar
The men who knead and bake the bread
From working with their faces bared,
Especially those who wear a beard.

Escape from all the city’s bustle,
And stop to sniff the blooming bluets;
For their aroma is so subtle,
Their pigmentation quite the bluest.

The savvy goose and cautious gander
Knew not to wander from the garden.
Beyond the paling, there was danger,
For that was where the foxes ranged.

The poet who had once aspired
To be admired and widely praised
Now wipes his kids and changes diapers
In resignation and despair.