A failure of the imagination

When it comes to evolution, I seem to have a failure of the imagination.   I just can't conceive how certain things could have done without certain other things, in the evolution 'process'.   The world seems so full of synchronicity that to imagine A without B just makes my head ache.   Hence the poem below, which hopefully won't be too below the belt for most readers....

I so so

So wanna believe in evolution,

but since no one can decide

which arrived first, the

chicken or the egg,

and since the eye has been

discredited as a possible

explanation for design,

being so cleverly designed that

only Evolution with a capital

E could have randomly come

up with it, then I have to con-

clude that when I ask how did the

penis manage to evolve without

the vagina, or the vagina without the

penis, that I’m just a no-hoper on the

scientific front, though not so much of a

no-hoper on the full frontal front.

But boastingly I digress;

what I’m trying to suggest is

that it’s a puzzle how the vagina

decided that it would arrive on the

scene just as the penis came into

prominence – as it were.  Or was

there a penis hanging around

(again I use the language somewhat

loosely) knowing in its own random,

evolutionary way, that there would be a

vagina slinking around in the bushes

somewhere, just kind of thinking,

(randomly, evolutionarily) that a

penis might be close by, and

useful.            


PS. In 2018 I read Darwin's Secret Sex Problem, which deals with exactly the issue I wrote about in the poem, and shows that I was right to query evolution. In fact, the writer F LaGard Smith, notes in the book: 
'How those first-ever sexually-reproducing organisms possibly could have evolved before sexual reproduction existed is quietly admitted by evolutionists to be the “Queen of Evolutionary Problems.”'

The tricks of a Sestina

I mentioned the Sestina in my last post, and gave a graphic version of it, which, when I came to try and use it, wasn't that easy to work with after all.   Stephen Fry lays out the ground plan for a Sestina like this:

ABCDEF 

FAEBDC

CFDABE

ECBFAD

DEACFB

BDFECA

That is, the word that corresponds in each case to A or B or C, etc, and appears at the end of a line, gets shifted around as the poem winds its way through the spiral.  At the end of the six stanzas we have an Envoi, a kind of final greeting to the reader, which uses this pattern  BE/DC/FA, squashing up the six key words into three lines.  

It's rather difficult to explain, so here's a properly formed example from W H Auden called Paysage Moralisé.   In this poem you can see how the key words at the end of the first six lines (valleys, mountains, water etc) wind their way around the poem.

Being keen to have a go at the Sestina, if only to say I've actually tried it, I produced the item below (notice I don't call it a poem).   I discovered shortly after I started that I'd begun to rhyme the key words instead of actually re-using them; hence the variations.  However I think the scheme is intact, and by the time I got to the envoi the words were back where they belonged again.   The metre isn't consistent because it's not easy to concentrate on getting the metre right as well as all the other juggling of words, but since this is only a practice run, I'm not fussing about that too much.   

I've written out the key words at the beginning, with their alphabetical symbol beside them.  I haven't thoroughly checked but I think they're intact, at least in terms of rhyming with the original.   The group of six letters are only at the side to give you an idea of where the key words/rhymes have gone to.   I was originally going to use a bunch of words that I came across in relation to trailer hitches, but they proved a bit of an obstacle in the way of getting the Sestina off the ground.  And anyway the 'poem' found its own way home.

A.     Hitch, B.  state, C. more, D.  this, E. sans, F. did

To start a poem with a trailer hitch               ABCDEF

Seems likely to put me in a state

Of dislocation, and furthermore

I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this

Which makes it a drive in the night sans

Headlights, which my brother-in-law did.

Well, now I’ve the problem that this grid      FAEBDC

Called Sestina needs to work one stitch

At a time, like a number of hands

All pulling, as if pulling their weight,

But in fact, pulling that way and this,

Between table and chair, window and door.

And now I’ve made it a chore                         CFDABE,

Since I should stick to the grid

And not rhyme; how did I miss

That instruction?  Surely some hitch

In my reading.  So I’m now in a state

And reverting to form as a man’s

Wont to do if he just lets his glands             ECBFAD

Rule him and acts like a boar

In a china shop throwing his weight

Everywhere, breaking this lid

And this plate, sending every which

Way and that crockery, with a hiss

And a roar, and unlikely to miss                    DEACFB

Any item he can lay his pig hands

On, or, with a whiskery twitch,

Like his cousin, the Minotaur,

(distant, I know) known to be hid-

den in his labyrinthic state

And rashly inclined to lie in wait                    BDFECA

For Heroes arriving in a bliss-

ful state of ignorance, fidd-

ling with their sword in their hands,

Relishing a fight and the gore

That would follow without hitch.

I’m sorry to state the heroes sans

Brains lose on this, and furthermore,

Only Theseus did the deed without hitch.

[This post got picked up for the weekly highlights on the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012 - An Aotearoa Affair site.  There are some interesting comments on the post there, including a note about Denise Duhamel's excellent Sestina: Delta Flight 659.  Note how she plays with the form....]