The Cheeky Song (Touch my bum)

For the second analysis of my choice, I've decided to do something unusual and ridiculous in order to amuse myself on this dreary day. One one such day in 2002, two pretty twin Romanian sisters in their 20s auditioned for a show called: "Popstars: The Rivals". One of the shocked judges was later reported to have said that they were: "the worst act ever!". Though their dreams of pop stardom seemed to be fading, the Irimia sisters, or: "Cheeky Girls" soon found themselves beset by record companies wanting to sign them. By the time they released their Debut single, which I am about to review, they were notorious in the UK as a result of their appearance on the show. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the worst pop song ever:


"The Cheeky Song (Touch my Bum)" 






Cheeky girls
Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys
Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys

Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys
Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys

I never ever ask where do you go
I never ever ask what do you do
I never ever ask what's in your mind
I never ever ask if you'll be mine
Come and smile don't be shy
Touch my bum this is life, ooh

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

Hmm cheeky, cheeky
Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky

Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys
Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys

Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys
Ooh, boys cheeky girls
Ooh, girls cheeky boys

I never ever ask where do you go
I never ever ask what do you do
I never ever ask what's in your mind
I never ever ask if you'll be mine
Come and smile, don't be shy
Touch my bum, this is life

Unu doy trei si

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

Come and join the cheeky club
This is what you want
Come and sing the cheeky song
Our cheeky song woo
Come and join the cheeky club
This is what you want

Come and sing the cheeky song
Our cheeky song woo
Come and smile, don't be shy
Touch my bum, this is life
Cheeky, cheeky

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls
We are the cheeky girls
You are the cheeky boys
You are the cheeky boys

Cheeky, cheeky


God, what absolute drivel. There is nothing good about this song at all. But wait.... Maybe there is some hidden meaning? Some concealed depth? "Ooh, boys, cheeky girls 

Ohh, girls, cheeky boys" x4 - I guess they're tying to rile up some teenager? That's what it sounds like. 




"I never ever ask where do you go
I never ever ask what do you do
I never ever ask what's in your mind
I never ever ask if you'll be mine
Come and smile don't be shy
Touch my bum this is life, ooh"

- Well, first of all , I have to address the glaringly  bad English in this stanza. It would be acceptable if the lyrics looked like this: I never ever ask: *pause* Where do you go?
But instead, it's all sung in one fast line, perhaps evidence of a lack of knowledge of the language on the part of the singers. 

Anyways, the song seems to be a message to some sort of unnamed man or boyfriend, telling him to calm down, and relax, that she's not intrusive and irritating,  that she's not going to bother him, and encouraging him to come over and... touch her bum. Yeah. 

That actually seems sort of sexist. Touch my bum? I mean, it's blunt, and vulgar. I find it odd that they're using the word bum, instead of a**, as most pop singers/rappers/ etc. seem to do these days. Perhaps they're trying (and failing miserably) to appear classy? What was in their minds, I'd like to know.

The rest of the song is basically a repetition of the beginning, more or less the same lines being repeated over and over again. 

With regards to poetic devices, it doesn't really rhyme. 

There's a bit of consonance with the boys girls things, but other than that I'm not really seeing much else. 

This is considered to be one of the worst songs of all time, 

and I wholeheartedly agree. 


Here's the video:





   

The Beauty of War

Poetic Analysis - The Beauty of War 

Curt Bennett

After having heard many a time about poetry of the first World War,  began to wonder if poetry was available from other 20th century wars. 
It seems to be the case, that when intellectual young men are drafted against their will, to fight in a foreign war, they often turn to an art form to express their frustration and anger, at the violation of their free will. The 20th century war in which the draft was arguably most controversial is definitely that which swept across South East Asia from the early 1960s, to the mid '70s. The Vietnam War came about at a time of great cultural change in the US, and I was curious to see what impact, if any, those dynamics had on the War poetry of that era.  The following is a poem by a Us fighter pilot, written while he was stationed in Vietnam - 

 
 THE BEAUTY OF WAR

War at night
Has a special beauty,
There is nothing anywhere,
That can quite compare.

Perimeter flares slice/arc the black,
Then bob and slowly weave to earth
Causing shadows to dance and weave
And stretch your world's reality.

Spectacular firefights
As streaming red fifties tattoo,
Clashing with sporadic VC green,
Harmonizes with 81mm quick-flashes.

Distant artillery white blinks
Splits the nearby tree line shadows,
As it cracking thunder
Streaks screaming through the sky.

High on his sky-throne
Spooky pisses his tracers in a gentle flow,
Moaned from multi barreled Gattling guns
That disappear and melt into the blackness below.

Nape at night is out of sight!
It splashes in yellowish, red syrupy splash,
That laboriously floats up, out then down
Smothering the earth and licking it clean.

Bombs are quick and ruthless,
Fast silver-white flashes in the black,
But cutting iron, not flash, kills,
And their mission is grim.

Rockets flash like zipping gangbusters,
Streaking a fiery sparkling tail
That skims into the black void to disappear,
Then resurrect again in detonation.

The sounds of war are different from others,
Not too unpleasant, but distinct,
The eternal crackle and chatter of radios,
 Filling the air like white, background noise.

The sights and sounds of war at night,
Are unseen and impersonal,
Without authorship or responsibility,
Somehow removed, to be viewed from afar.

One unpleasant reality of war
Is the smell, the cordite burn,
The acrid sweet smell of sweet pork,
From burning, human meat.

Somehow that and the screams
Of the unseen dying somewhere
Out there, tends to diminish
The beauty and fun of it all.

Many soldiers, including those that I know personally, describe the war of night as being beautiful. 

At least, that's the case when you're looking at it from a mountain, or a cockpit, in this case. The poet describes it all in vivid detail from the sights, to the sounds. The first part of the poem is almost an ode to war, using heavy simile and personification to being to life the Vietnamese landscape as it is chewed up by a war.

One of my favorite parts of this stanza, is the verse in which Bennett describes the Spooky, high on his throne, spraying down white fire in the form of thousands of bullets. A Spooky is not an airborne ghost in the literal sense, but rather an old American transport plane from World War 2, stripped of seats, and fitted with several miniguns facing out the left side. The gunship slowly circles a target, such as a hill,or building, and sprays (or as the author says, pisses) thousands of bullets down onto it. These aircraft were a novel invention at that time, and were viewed with awe, and fear, on both sides.  One of the major themes present in the poem is that of the dehumanizing aspect of fighting at night, especially from the air. At night, a pilot can barely see anything, he relies on electronics and such to tell him where to go, and where to shoot. He fires guns, and drops bombs, but never sees where they go, or what they hit, whereas during the day, the pilot can see the house or such that he is going to destroy, and may catch a glimpse of the target. To kill another human being is a heavy thing, and yet, when done at night, with a plane, or an artillery strike, much of the weight carried by the perpetrator seems to fall away. With regards to the more conventional aspects of the poem - it employs simile and personification to enhance and dramatize/poeticize the events depicted, the poem doesn't really rhyme, but I feel that its other aspects make it a traditional, yet avante-guard war poem.

The Tyger

William Blake- The Tyger

This my last poem off the list. Hooray!

Tyger... Interesting way of spelling it, don't you think? Well, here's the rest of it:

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire? 
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet? 
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? "

A poem from the end of the 18th century, interesting, my oldest yet, and yet the last. This poem speaks of what was then a legendary, and extremely exotic beast from foreign lands. The poet seems to be writing from a place of curiosity about the animal, which he knows little about. Most of the lines rhyme with those below them: i.e. Gasp-clasp bright-night etc.  It employs trochaic tetrameter as its meter, which was fairly common at the time. When reading "Tyger", we open a window onto Blake's wonder at this animal, wondering where it roams, what it does. It's almost like a child who has heard of a distant and wondrous beast, and is filled with curiosity about it: What the hand dare seize the fire?  What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry? I can't say that I wondered like that when I was a kid, but the feeling and intent is still the same. Another perspective could be that the poet is contemplating the tiger, perhaps in a cage, and wondering what it does in the wild. In the 1700s, there weren't pictures or books, so if you weren't an explorer, you wouldn't be able to visualize the jungles of South East Asia, and see the tigers hunting their prey. On to the poetic devices: Rhyme is obvious, using an a-a-b-b pattern, but the others are more complex. We see alliteration: burning bright, and personification: the stars threw down their spears, as well as symbolism: The Tiger represents evil, while the lamb represents good; and innocence. Finally, there is use of archaic spelling: eg "tyger", which conveys a further sense of mysticism around the animal.   

I felt a funeral in my brain

I felt a funeral in my brain - Emily Dickinson

This is a dark and disturbing poem, an allegorical account of the author going insane: 

"I felt a funeral in my brain,
        And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
        That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
        A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
        My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
        And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
        Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
        And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
        Wrecked, solitary, here.

 And then a plank in reason, broke,                                                                                                     And I dropped down and down--                                                                                                   And hit a world at every plunge--                                                                                               And finished knowing--then—"

 

 The poem was written by Emily Dickinson, a famous American poet, who's works often deal with death. And yet, in this case the poem isn't necessarily about the death of a person. Rather it's about the death of a part of them, in this case, her mind. She writes of a funeral in her brain, essentially recognizing its death, and of mourners treading, until it seemed that sense had broken through-perhaps that her head hurt, until she realized what was happening. To me this poem is almost like a dream, or rather, a nightmare. I find it hard to believe that a person could be consciously aware of such things taking place in real time, it is  far more likely that this would be going on while they were asleep. A pattern which we can observe while analyzing this poem is the poet's slow, but visible loss of rationality and clarity as the poem progresses through to the last stanza. We go from the fist, which while odd, and disturbing, is still fairly comprehensible, to the last: "And then a plank in reason, broke,

        And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
        And finished knowing--then—"

 which sounds like a psychedelic trip. However, seeing as how LSD was not available in the 1800s, we must assume that the poet was "sober", so to speak  when she wrote the poem. Interestingly, the thing that this  last stanza reminds me the most of is falling of a platform or such in a video game, and falling through the fabric of the game world itself, through to the blue or black void beneath the map. Depending on the game, it can be a rather surreal experience. Wait, was I getting a little zoned out there? Yes. Yes, I was. Anyhow, on to the use of poetic devices in the poem: The poem maintains a regular rhyme structure, with every other line rhyming. Personification is also rampant, with the poet's consciousness becoming mourners, and such. As, I mentioned at the beginning  the poem is an allegory, which is essentially a big metaphor.  We also see the use of smaller metaphors, for example: In the last line, where the person falls after the plank breaks, and stops knowing - This is a metaphor for the poet either loosing what they think to be consciousness, or having their brain shut down, and loosing the ability to function  becoming brain dead. As well, things like:"As all the heavens were a bell" .   Finally, we see the use of simile: ''A service like a drum".

Overall, an interesting poem, but very creepy.     

        

Spring is like a perhaps hand

E.E Cummings - Spring is like a perhaps hand 

"Spring is like a perhaps hand". Odd, isn't it? This poem has a strange meter, and even stranger use of language to boot.

"(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)". And now parentheses as well? In fact, half of 

this poem is in multiple sets of parentheses. It has to be one of 

the strangest pices of literature of any kind that I've ever seen, 

much less had to do an assignment on. Interestingly, the entire poem is 

actually a personifying metaphor from the start. The author is using the term: 

"perhaps hand", to refer to the spring season, which he describes as creating

a window (the landscape) "into which people look ( while some stare 
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)". I believe that this poet is trying to say that 

that spring is a new thing every year, the change in temperature and weather

(essentially the hand) which removes the snow, and replaces it with grass, and rain. 

brings to life old creations such as trees (the known), and creates strange things

(new plants). " and changing everything carefully" - This is a continuation of what 

I was describing before, the personified season (the hand) removes what the hand 

of winter placed, and replaces it with new. Funny enough, the next stanza of the poem goes on to do 

exactly what I was just talking about: 

"spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything."      

Here Cummings goes into more detail, describing the way in which the hand 

goes about doing the actions described above.  Perhaps the most important 

line of the second stanza is the last: "and without breaking anything". It concludes

the poem, but almost leaves the reader hanging, as if waiting for something more

- it seems sort of unfinished. However, it does stress the fact that the hand of 

spring is very careful as it goes about it's work, replacing and renewing the old,

and bringing in the new without breaking the world. I find this to be mostly true 

in nature. With regards to poetic devices: The poem has two primary ones, personification, in that the 

spring is depicted as being a hand, and metaphor, as the hand is a metaphor for the season. 

We also observe the use of rhyme, and assonance (ex. "arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully"). And there you have it, an odd analysis of an odd poem.       

Departure in the Dark

Poem Analysis: Departure in the Dark

I must admit, I chose to review this poem because the name seemed to suggest that it was more recent. The poem was written by C. Day-Lewis, a British poet, and former communist. I haven't been able to find out when the poem was written, but I thinks it's from the 30s, due to the style of writing, which is not evocative to me of anything from the 50s on. The poem is a pessimistic and dreary.. You know what, I don't even know what it is. It describes the feeling of leaving your house in the early morning of the winter, an act which I quite enjoy, as sharply reminding a man he is mortal. My interpretation of that statement is that the cold, and darkness lead the man to realize that he is but a mortal being on earth, almost insignificant in the scope of things. The poet then goes on to verbally loll about his poem, using such unused words as: "clemming", or "inverate". The former apparently means starving (clem - to starve) , and the latter, " Firmly and long established; deep-rooted". Interesting, anyways, Day-Lewis was so glum when he was writing this, that he even went on to declare that: "Drear, extinct is the world,
And has no voice for consolation or presage.", which I take to mean that the world seems abandoned in the early morning, and that the man feels very alone. Next, the poem begins to take greater, direction, mentioning passover, and then the Israelites. He says that "No doubt for the Israelites that early morning
It was hard to be sure
If home were prison or prison home: the desire
Going forth meets the desire returning." In essence, he begins to compare the feeling of the man, leaving his house in the early morning for a trip, to that of the Jews leaving Egypt, and fleeing Pharaoh. We end the poem with a declaration by Lewis that "There's a kind of release
And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man–
And will be, even to the last of his dark departures." This is a fantastic ending to an interesting poem. With regards to poetic devices, simile does appear, though looking at it, I'm not able to see much else based on the list I have here. That being said, I have a feeling that much of the poem is a metaphor for something else. He makes use of very grand language, talking about the worlds being gloomed, and starved by an imminent ice age. Over all, there was more to it than I first realized, but it remains a thick, and mysterious composition.