'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]'

Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a generous 417 versions of Ode 1.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described by the poet as “rendered almost word for word without Rhyme according to the Latin Measure.” Scrolling through Isaac’s table of contents and pausing occasionally to sample an entry, I recognized an unexpected name: Morrie Ryskind (1895-1985), not exactly a well-known classicist. 

With George S. Kaufman, Ryskind co-wrote the stage version of Animal Crackers (1928) and the screenplays for four Marx Brothers movies: Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), A Night at the Opera (1935) and Room Service (1938). His theatrical collaborators included George and Ira Gershwin, and Irving Berlin. When Ryskind married in 1929, Groucho was his best man. In 1921, he had a volume of light verse, Unaccustomed As I Am, published by Knopf. It collects fourteen of his adaptations of Horatian odes, including Isaac’s selection, here titled “Horace the Wise”:

 

“Oh, Pyrrha, tell me who’s the guy,

The boob, the simp you’ve got a date with?

(Well I recall what time ’twas I

You’d tête-à-tête with!)

 

“I saw him in the barber’s chair:

His face perfumed with scented water,

And oil upon his shoes and hair –

Dressed for the slaughter!

 

“I do not know this kid whose goat

You’ve got by saying you adore him.

But, take it from this famous pote,

I’m sorry for him!

 

“The fates deal kindly with the lad!

This crush of his – how he will rue it!

He’ll call you everything that’s Bad –

Ain’t I been through it?”

 

I like the tough-guy diction – “the boob, the simp” -- and the use of “tête-à-tête” as a verb. “Pote,” I assume, is the way Ryskind thinks the semi-cretinous would pronounce “poet,” though the OED informs us that pote has seven meanings, none from later than 1694. His poem dates from early in the Golden Age of Light Verse. The quality of Ryskind’s light verse is spotty. Here is the first poem in his collection, “Opening Chorus”:

 

“A triolet’s a pretty thing

To open up a vol. with.

Oh, who can blame me if I sing,

A triolet’s a pretty thing!

With it a frail may cop a king —

It's good to make a moll with!

A triolet’s a pretty thing

To open up a vol. with!”

 

Frail as a noun takes me back to Dashiell Hammett and George Raft movies. See the OED: “Chiefly U.S. Usually depreciative. A sexually promiscuous woman; (also) a prostitute; a mistress. Later also: a girl or woman, esp. considered sexually. Now chiefly historical and likely to be regarded as offensive.” Italics in the original.