More fun stuff from my forum!

You may recall a couple months ago, I took a week’s worth of words of the day from Merriam Webster’s website and matched them up with previous artwork of mine.  It’s quite fun to see how varied my work has been over the years, and that I can dig up something I drew in the past for just about any occasion.  I saw a new opportunity to do that last week when one of my board buddies Rafferbee posted part of a trivia contest her and her team were participating in.  Listed were what was considered to be by the trivia host’s source to be the ten most well-known lines of poetry in history.

I immediately went to work playing avatar matchup (Since I know little about poetry to begin with!), and here is what I came up with….

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet 43… not to be confused with her later work, “Funk 49”)

Brother, can you spare a finger?

I originally drew this last summer to help promote a game by Vandal on the board called “TEN!”  ES can only count up to 8 on his paws, which is 6 fewer than he’d need to complete his sonnet…

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

Poet: Billy Shakespeare (Sonnet 18… boy, poets are as bad with coming up with good titles as I am!)

It’s getting hot in herre…

This was also drawn last summer during the middle of that terrible heat wave we had during the month of July…… and August….. and early September….. blech!  Anyway, now we know what it looks like Sully there’s trying to say….

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink

Poet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Pure, refreshing Clean Linen scent!

Who knew I was so poetic last summer?  Yep, this one was originally drawn last June as a fusing of two events…. me having to siphon the water out of my washer after it wouldn’t drain, and poor Beebs suffering through a drought down in Houston.  Drink up!

All in the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred

Poet: Alfred Lord Tennyson (The Charge of the Light Brigade)

Torches and pitchforks and angry village mobs!

Matias is the son of one of Sprots’ friends who she would often post pictures of in her avatar, which I would often hijack to insert cute ES interacting with him.  She quit posting Matias avatars a year and a half ago to protest all of the “horrible” and “phonied up” avatars I drew of her and ES, which disappointed the many on the board who enjoyed seeing them.  That was the inspiration behind this avatar….. CHARGE!

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

Poet: Edgar Allen Poe (The Raven…… NEVERMORE!)

(crickets)

I drew this just a few months ago in conjunction with numerous requests our resident author Vandal got for signed copies of his debut novel.  While ES is more upset that nobody is interested in signed merchandise from his shop, he does seem to be pondering weak and weary over just why nobody appreciates a hack like him….

One if by land, and two if by sea

Poet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Paul Revere’s Ride)

Never insult the elderly

ES gets threatened by land, here by Kiki in her Jazzy after ES made yet another joke about her….. um, mature state.

You sunk my dinghy!

And by sea, as Sprots uses a little remote control nuclear weaponry here on ES’s little boat.

To err is human; to forgive, divine

Poet: Alexander Pope (An Essay on Criticism…. or, a critcism on criticism….)

Yarn it to heck!

I referred to this avatar in my Favorite Things post earlier this month.  Here poor Angel is erring quite horribly with her craft project.  Won’t you please forgive her?

But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep

Poet: Robert Frost (Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening)

I hope there is no extra charge for fleas

Hobo ES stopping by the gates of Kiki’s Stately Harris Manor was inspired by one of her unwanted houseguests a couple years ago.  ES, I imagine, is always an unwanted houseguest.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Poet: Dylan Thomas (The only line that is also the poem’s title!)

Sprots isn’t gonna be so gentle if she could just get out of that hypnotic trance ES has her in….

I displayed this one for My Favorite Things as well, and was damn well going to put “La Sprotsie Bella” in my tribute to poetry somewhere, and this is where it fir best….

I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree

Poet: Joyce Kilmer (Trees)

It’s raining fruit!

This is “The Appleocalypse”, a favorite avatar of many on the board, inspired by the seemingly never-ending series of cataclysmic events Oklahoma suffered through last year… with ES providing the icing on the cake with his own version of Revelations.

And thus completes today’s entry in visual poetry.  Had the classics been this much fun, I might have done better in my literature classes….