2024, Family, Food, home, Poems, Uncategorized

Hiawatha’s Pork Roast Smoking

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I really can’t explain how the idea for this post came together. All I can tell you is that I was sitting at my desk at work on Wednesday when The Song of Hiawatha, Lewis Carroll’s parody Hiawatha’s Photographing, and Husband’s plan to smoke a pork shoulder on the 4th all converged in my brain.

Husband has planned to get his smoker going for weeks, and he has been fussing about the fuels he needs, the type of rub and mop he would use, and the pork shoulder he intended to smoke. I guess that might have reminded me of Carroll’s parody of the photographer fussing to set up the camera and get the photo subjects to cooperate. My Uncle Harvey’s farm in Pipestone. MN bordered the National Monument where The Song of Hiawatha pageant was performed (my tall, blonde, cousins were often extras in the production), and my parents took me to see it several times.

I have never been a fan of Longfellow’s poetry. I also have a hard time reading epic poems like The Kalevela that have been translated into a sing-song cadence. It dawned on me that if I could write a parody of Longfellow, anyone could. Here goes:

Husband Chris got out the smoker,

Like an iron lung, the smoker

Filled it up with logs and wood chips

Double checked that it was perfect

Set the contents all on fire

Waited for the embers glowing

Then he made the pork roast spice rub

Covered all the roast with spice rub

Closed the lid and smoked the shoulder

Sat for hours by the smoker

Feeding logs and chips as needed

Doused the roast with special mop sauce

Drank some beer to pass the hours

I had to stop there. The eight syllable pattern was getting tedious. It could go on and on, just like Longfellow.

What are your favorite/least favorite epic poems? What activities turn you into a fuss pot?

35 thoughts on “Hiawatha’s Pork Roast Smoking”

  1. You’ve outdone yourself, Renee.

    I have a copy of The Song of Hiawatha, not because I admire it as poetry but because it seemed obligatory for someone living in Longfellow neighborhood within walking distance of Minnehaha Park to keep one as reference.

    The poem is ripe for parody. Another commenter, who I found online, put it succinctly:
    “The parodists realised something Longfellow could not, that the measure was far better adapted to burlesque than to weepy tragedy, and that the variations and repetitions that make Hiawatha so wearisome were already comic by misadventure, if not intent. Some poems are self-parodic before they’re ever parodied.”

    The Lewis Carroll parody is a clever one. I have it in a collection of parodies from the nineteenth century. I also have two others: Plur-i-bus-tah, a history of America (up until the 1850s) by Mortimer Thomson writing as Q. K. Philander Doesticks and The Song of Milkanwatha, written by Reverend George A. Strong under the pseudonym ‘Mark Antony Henderson.

    I hope no activities turn me into a fuss pot, but that’s in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

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  3. Growing up on the shores of Kitchi-Gumee, I attended Minnehaha elementary school. There had once been a Hiawatha school but it was demolished long ago. Minnehaha still exists. None of the original building still exists.
    Clyde

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  4. The pork was wonderful. Husband has been on a kick of eating foods from Spain, which caused him to get a prose translation of El Cid.

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  5. Nice paraody, indeed. The original has a rhythm that sucks you in but into nothing and is disrespectful. I. too, distlike his poetry. I like some of John Greenleaf Whittier.
    A parody of parodies. I think Ogden Nash: “I’d much rather have written trees than all its thousan parodies.”

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  6. Oh, laughing till tears are running down my cheeks!
    I haven’t read many epic poems, and will have to think a bit.

    I get very fussy about food being properly contained in the kitchen and dining room – no crumbs except on plates… because they draw the ants. Husband doesn’t always comply.
    Also fussy at times about the wording of emails I send out, esp. on sensitive topics. Keep changing words and punctuation until it says exactly what I want to say.

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      1. From JacAnon,

        The laptop is on my desk downstairs. The post. Meh? Who knows! I am sorry I am having posting issues, too. WP is such a mess.

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  9. I do not have the time and energy to be a fusspot anymore. My sister’s husband is on the verge of death. My son’s job is likely to disappear. Cleo and I were once very close. She married an image of me. When Carl and I were together, people thought we were brothers. But worse we had similar personalities. It is disheartening to watch your own faults. I married a sister image, not by appearance, but by personalities.
    Clyde

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  10. The meter does lend itself to parody.

    Little Pippin, scared of fireworks
    And I can’t control the loud jerks.
    How much longer can I hold him?
    He’s so wiggly, can’t control him.

    The Fourth is here, the rain is here too,
    Destroying plans for fun and yahoos.
    Flags and grills and sunscreen lotion,
    Parades and picnics, then explosions.

    Boring me, quiet at home
    Pippin sleeping next to his bone.
    Happy Fourth to everyone here
    Remember not to drink too much beer!

    I was a fusspot at work. It didn’t make me popular. The training and the work experiences I had made me particular about how things were done. The time you spend with someone making them comfortable and helping them achieve their goals can make a huge difference in the life they lead. I’ve been able to disconnect from it now. I think of some of the people I cared for and I wonder if they’re getting optimal care now, but I have had to let go for my own sake.

    I’m also OCD about some things, but I don’t fuss openly. I know it’s irritating and I don’t want to alienate people. I might go back and correct a little something so that I’m comfortable, but I try not to be noticed.

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    2. I don’t have the mental energy to re-reread his Four Quartets but wish I did. Don’t think I would call it epic poetry, just an epic effort to embrace it all.

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  12. Don’t know if Henrik Ibsen’s Terje Vigen qualifies as an “epic” poem, but it’s definitely my favorite longer poem.
    It is a narrative poem, written in Norwegian and much revered by Norwegians, and it’s truly a stunning piece of work. It’s a tradition that the poem is read on Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

    I was introduced to the poem in Basel by a Norwegian medical student I was dating at the time. He knew it by heart and dramatically recited it to me. He was a different kind of guy. On our first date he invited me to the movies to see 101 Dalmations. At any rate, Terje Vigen is a poem I’ve read many times, but I have managed to memorized only the first three stanzas.

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  14. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I do not go for epic poetry at all, though I am mightily impressed with your efforts here, Renee. You were caught up on a wisp of whimsy yesterday!

    If anyone ever made an accident rhyme around my dad, he would say:

    You’re a poet
    You don’t know it.
    Your feet are Longfellows.

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  15. Oh my goodness it’s not raining
    It has been a whole two hours
    Since the last raindrops were falling
    What’s that strange round gold thing up there?

    I’m so glad I was not camping
    Out at Prairie Island Campground,
    Where the camp sights are all flooded
    And the campers ‘vacuated.

    Bet the ducks are really happy
    And the robins like the puddles
    Yes, the puddles make a birdbath
    Make some birdbaths in the alley.

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  16. I’ve been thinking about this all day and with the possible exception Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, I don’t have any favorite epic poems. In fact, I don’t really like epic poems very much. If the poem gets too long, I’d really rather just have prose. I’m not sure what that says about me.

    Like Krista I was a huge fusspot at work. I wanted things the way I wanted them. This actually made me very popular with all the support areas because I was clear about what I wanted, I was willing to take some extra work if I was asking a lot, and I was very generous with praise for my teams. I was told by the supervisor of one of the support areas that in their weekly meeting, they’d had some “conflict” because they were fighting over who would get assigned a program of mine. I always got high marks from the operations staff for giving tightly put- together programs. Yea, I’m full of myself sometimes!!

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