Bad Poetry: Earwigs

Edward Newman was a 19th-century British poet and President of the Entomological Society. It should therefore come as no surprise that his poetic masterpiece was an 86-page treatise on bugs, The Insect Hunter. The following is from the section "Earwigs."

Notice that Newman doesn't bother with rhyme. He has a similar insouciance with regard to alliteration, figures of speech, repetition, or almost any other poetic device you can think of. He has definitely mastered the art of monotonous cadence, however, chopping an endless catalog into four-foot lines of verse:

First of walkers come the Earwigs,
Earwigs or Forficulina;
The hind wings, quite transparent,
Like a lady's fan are folded
Neatly up beneath the fore wings,
And when opened out are earshaped,
Very beautiful to gaze on;
All the legs are very simple,
And the feet are all three jointed;
At the tail we find a weapon
Very like a pair of pincers,
And with this 'tis said the Earwigs
Open and fold up the hind wings;
You may watch them and observe it;
I have never had that pleasure.

Pelmet I Like

Here's an interesting doorway treatment in front of Diva's Palace, a funky boutique in Providence, Rhode Island. This is a metal pelmet trimmed with beads. Although it wouldn't shade or shelter anyone, it draws the eye nicely to the shop entrance.

A pelmet is ordinarily a window rather than a door treatment. Its purpose is to conceal the curtain fixtures at the top of the window casing. This particular pelmet would look fab in my bedroom over the drapes I made recently.

I had originally thought to make a fabric-covered pelmet (the more usual type). With a swatch of the drapery fabric, I went to nearby Osgood Textile Company, which boasts the largest fabric inventory in the country--over two million yards in stock. I wandered every aisle of the cavernous space, looking for a coordinating print, but couldn't find a single fabric I liked. Since the drapery panels were a solid color, you wouldn't think I would've come up empty! But there it is.

So I think I'll quit looking for a fabric and begin daydreaming instead about a metal pelmet. Unfortunately, they're almost nonexistent today. I guess I'd have to make it myself: buy a sheet of copper or tin (relatively soft metals), snip it to size, hammer a design into it, antique the finish, and then trim it with strings of beads. A good project for some of that spare time I don't know what to do with, ha ha.