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call/me (a/round)
Posted: 19 October 2010
Word Count: 89
Summary: one for Carl and Sigmund..................
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call
me
call me soon
call me often
call me off
call me up
call me over
call me 'round
call me square
call me a dreamer
call me Mitty
call me a crank
call me a cab
call me skeptical
call me Thomas
call me old fashioned
call me collect
call me hypocritical
call me Heep
call me gullable
call me paranoid
call me Burrroughs
call me mister
call me friend
call me to account
call me eccentric
call me innocent
call me Ishmael
call me
call
me
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Comments by other Members
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 joanie at 21:20 on 19 October 2010
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Well, Mike, I have always said that I love repetition! I have read this a couple of times and think that it would be great to HEAR it performed. Some of the phrases I'm not sure about, but that's my lack of knowledge, I'm sure! I love it.
joanie
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 FelixBenson at 18:19 on 21 October 2010
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Really interesting Mike, and I like the way it shifts and eludes. Deceptively simple, it's really quite slippery this one. More than the simple, 'call me anything you like, just call me' joke, it does reveal some really interesting details.
the humour really comes across:
call me a crank
call me a cab |
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and the rhythmic bits really make you you first think about the sound but then ponder the details:
call me often
call me off |
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and
call me hypocritical
call me Heep
call me gullable |
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I like the way it ends with a beginning:
and then sort of tails off, but begins again.
Thought provoking and funny.
Kirsty
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 Ticonderoga at 13:20 on 22 October 2010
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joanie and Kirsty -
Many thanks both; I think it's mostly a reaction to the melancholy stuff I've had to write recently......but it's fun to speak - and could really go on ad infinitum with whatever variations you care to add..........
Thanks again,
Mike
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 James Graham at 15:12 on 23 October 2010
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Hugely entertaining - it sets off all kinds of trains of thought.
Sometimes it seems to be saying ‘Please call me...’ e.g. please call me soon. Sometimes ‘Call me such-and-such if you like, I don’t care’ e.g. crank, or Heep. Even ‘Call me such-and-such and I’ll be flattered’ e.g. friend. Or dreamer? or eccentric? (If it was me, I’d take these as compliments.)
‘Call me Ishmael.’ That’s how one of the great stories begins. Whenever it is ‘a damp, drizzly November in my soul’ Ishmael tells us, the cure is to ‘sail about a little and see the watery part of the world’. Is this the Ishmael you’d like to be called? The one who from time to time has to stop himself from ‘deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off’ and knows it’s ‘high time to get to sea as soon as I can’? Or is it the son of Abraham, who’s described somewhere as ‘wicked though repentant’?
‘Call me Thomas’. Doubting, I assume. Rational, really - he needs evidence. ‘Call me Burroughs’ - would that be William S. or Edgar Rice (Tarzan) Burroughs? The former, I think.
‘Call me over’ suggests a beckoning finger and the baleful words: ‘I’d like a word with you in my office’. Or a woman’s beckoning finger, perhaps, and what a friend of mine once called ‘The most terrible thing a man can ever hear’- a woman saying ‘We need to talk’.
Call me off’- it’s usually savage dogs that have to be called off, but perhaps the poem’s speaker has to be called off too, in a similar sense - while taking an argument too far...?
It adds up to a character sketch, and it all fits together pretty well I think. Some apparent contradictions aren’t as contradictory as they might seem - it’s quite possible for someone to be skeptical about some things and gullible about others, or to be both paranoid and innocent.
Enjoyed this very much.
James.
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Ticonderoga at 13:09 on 25 October 2010
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James -
Much thanks! Bang on the nail as ever.........Melville and William S. of course were intended.....................
Ta,
Mike
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SarahT at 12:47 on 27 November 2010
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Hi,
It would be good to see this poem performed but the repetition stands scrutiny in a written form which, I think is partly down to the structure which gives it a visual momentum although I did enjoy playing 'guess the reference'.
S
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Comments by other Members
