There's an old gag-form:
If you cross a kangaroo with a sheep, you get A woolly jumper. If you cross a chicken with a cement mixer, you get a A brick layer! There's also been some experimentation with cross breeding in the animal world. If you cross a donkey with a horse, you get a mule. If you cross a lion with a tiger, you get a liger - or a tigon.
All of which is almost irrelevant to the kind of hybrid I'm interested in. I've had the idea for a very long time - over 20 years. What would happen if you were to cross Great Literature with Pop Culture - for instance, wed some lines from Shakespeare with some lines from Pop songs. Maybe we could call it Popspeare or a Shake Pop.
Here are some examples:
1
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Manana is good enough for me.
2
Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears.
Listen, do you want to know a secret?
Of course, it doesn't have to be Shakespeare. It could be Chaucer or Keats or Byron or Coleridge …
3
It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three
“Do you know the way to San Jose?
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?”
4
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms
Alone and palely loitering?
It's been a hard day's night
And I've been working like a dog.
5
The king sits in Dumfermline Town
Drinking the blude red wine
Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine
When you gonna let me get sober
6
In the beginning, God created
The heavens and the earth
Trains and boats and planes
Snowflakes that stay on my
Nose and my lashes
Frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails
Blackbirds singing in the dead of night
Silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row
Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all
Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all
7
We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
So - there are a few examples. Get your pens and minds working and add to the growing canon of Popspeare. Okay, maybe it's not a cannon yet - more of a cracker. But who knows - if enough of us write Popspears, the form will be accepted as a POETIC FORM in its own right.
