Yo, Dude: Shelley & Milton Meet Doug Lang [Terence Winch]

 

 

In honor of  Percy Bysshe Shelley's recent birthday and John Milton's perpetual relevance, here are two pieces from Doug Lang’s funny, dazzling, and supremely inventive sonnet collection, dérangé (which full disclosure requires me to acknowledge that I happily helped bring to publication):  

 

Paradise Dude sonnet

 

Of Mans First Disobedience, dude, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, dude, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, dude, OMG, and all our woe,

With loss of EDEN, dude, till one greater Dude, dude,

Restore us, dude, and regain the blissful Seat, dude,

Sing Heav'nly Muse, OMG, that on the secret top

Of OREB, dude, or of SINAI, dude, didst inspire

That Shepherd, dude, who first taught the chosen Seed, dude.

In the Beginning, dude, how the Heav'ns and Earth, dude,

Rose out of CHAOS, OMG: Or if SION Hill, OMG

Delight thee more, dude, and SILOA'S Brook that flow'd, dude,

Fast by the Oracle of God, dude, WTF; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, dude,

That OMG with no middle flight intends to soar, dude, just sayin’

 

 

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Yo, Yo, Oz sonnet

 

Yo, yo, I met a traveler from an antique land, yo,

Who said: Yo, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert, yo. Near them, on the sand, yo,

Half sunk, yo, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, yo, and sneer of cold command, yo,

Tell that its sculptor, yo, well those passions read, yo,

Which yet survive, yo, stamped on these lifeless things, yo,

The hand that mocked them, yo, and the heart that fed, yo;

And on the pedestal, yo,  these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, yo, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair, yo!”

Nothing beside remains, yo. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, yo, boundless and bare, yo,

The lone and level sands, yo, stretch far away, yo.

 

Comments

[Chris Mason]

I love these two sonnets as well as the whole book, derange.

[casey smith esq]

look on my works and get ready to fuck-all despair! doug lang doug lang.

[Tom Mandel]

Doug Lang is mighty, but looking on his works we do not despair. Two pair beats despair.

As is well known, Doug is one of the best kept secrets of our time. Of all time -- no problem. Any time.

Doug Lang has become a name. There is nothing we need more of than the one and only (Doug Lang).

Reader, do you keep a list? Good. Put dérangé at the top of your list. You won't be sorry. You'll want even more Doug, which I hope will be coming soon.

[Stephen Reichert, Smartish Pace]

"...Zen joke #2: Women are just like men with dicks. Do you dig Nidji?" --Standup sonnet, from dérangé (with the best dedication in the history of western poetry)

"We hadn't had such a terribly good time in those days, and better things were ahead of us, but the trouble with the future is that it doesn't stop when it gets you to the place you want to be, it moves right on and takes you with it." --Freaks by Doug Lang

[William McPherson]

Brilliantly hilarious, hilariously brilliant, whatever. Doug Lang is inimitable, which cannot be said, apparently, of the dude Milton and Yo Yo Shelley.

[lally]

as brilliant as the first time

[dan gutstein]

the great dudley randall said that a poet is not a jukebox but have we considered whether a poet could be a slot machine? if so, these sonnets -- and all of derange -- hit the jackpot, dude-dude-dude, or yo-yo-yo. the verbal riches tumble around us and we are better for lang's genius, indeed.