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| This postcard from 1912 depicts the bachelor's anxiety of Leap day. |
While leap day helps re-adjust the calendar, it’s also the day when women can romantically pursue men. The tradition goes all the way back to 5th century Ireland when St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick about the fair sex having to wait for too long for men to propose. In the 13th century, Queen Margaret of Scotland reinforced the tradition, declaring it the day when women had the right to propose to any man she fancied. In the United States, February 29 is known as Sadie Hawkins Day. In Al Capp’s L’il Abner cartoon strip, it was the only chance for Sadie – “the homeliest gal in the hills” – to snag a husband.
Here at Dalnews, leap day’s history provides us with a loose thematic connection to catch up with a story left over from Valentine’s: the first annual Valentine’s Jotted and Judged Sonnet competition. Students were challenged by the Department of English and Dalhousie English Society to write love poems in 14 lines.
But not all the entries turned out to be lovely-dovey. First-prize winner Peter Chiykowski went “post-apocalyptic” on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.”
Here are the winning entries:
Untitled
Shall I compare thee to world’s ending?
An uncertain quiver that shakes the core,
That ushers with its furious rending,
A promise of silence and nothing more.
Promise me a world of cracking concrete,
Of empty cities and of soiled skies,
Where we strolling down the purposeless streets,
Speak of the ashes in our hair and eyes.
I wish to creep across your grey-clad heart,
Like the ivy across the tumbled stones,
And in a dying world not worlds apart,
We will go walking through the city’s bones.
Through the greenest seasons fool lovers’ heads,
In a wasted world we shall make our beds.
Peter Chiykowski is a second-year student from Richmond Hill, Ont.
Rendezvous
A shadowed, curtained, glowing, hidden place –
Flushed skin to skin, forbidden tangled lust.
A violent kind of tryst arranged in haste:
“We can’t, we can’t.” “We will, we will, we must.”
A day – one hundred lover’s years – apart,
Since from that last embrace themselves they wrenched,
Still hunger swells their separated hearts,
Desire for goblin’s fruits not eas’ly quenched.
Once more, once more; a promised curtain call
To end at last their secret treachery,
But rising action doesn’t always fall –
The pinnacle’s the finest place to be.
And so the lovers linger at the peak,
And hunger trumps betrayal if thrill you seek.
Amy Dempsey is a fourth-year honours student majoring in English.
Lady Rye
My lady is a piquant broad, endowed
With alluring amber shades that mask her
Subtley arrant ways; for though I’m master,
She the mistress, my nee leads me to bow
In awe of artifice that cheats the proud,
Caught by her warm kiss, possessed by the lure
Of greatness and wisdom that may endure
Beyond plagues and kingdoms and death’s cold shroud.
And I, I am one of that cuckold crowd –
I draw my art from what her heat infers,
Her taste transmuting my passions to word,
Stinging my tongue that I roar song aloud.
Though I am master, I cannot deny
I take my lessons from fair Lady Rye.
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| See now I’ve cracked wise to you, Miss Scarlet ... |
Julia Clahane is a fourth-year arts student at Dalhousie University.
Bored Games
I know you cheated in that Scrabble match.
Thinking of it now, I’m filled with pity.
I had both Fs, the limit of the batch,
Yet somehow you laid I-N-F-I-D-E-L-I-T-Y.
That first chess game, early in our wooing,
It seemed we’d mated fair ‘n’ square and right.
I now question what your queen was doing
Sneakily creeping ‘round that other knight.
See now I’ve cracked wise to you, Miss Scarlet.
The dice was rolled, and snake eyes came to rest.
Parker Brothers preach fair play, you harlot
And frown upon your community chest.
I understand that keeping score is moot;
That has become a trivial pursuit
Mitchell Cushman is a fourth-year student majoring in English and theatre.
LINK: Department of English