I Wish I Was 18 Again
"Antigonish" is an 1899 verse form past the American educator and poet, William Hughes Mearns. It is as well known as "The Niggling Homo Who Wasn't There" and was adapted as a hit vocal under the latter title.
Verse form [edit]
Inspired by reports of a ghost of a human roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada,[1] the poem was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed, which Mearns had written for an English grade at Harvard Academy, circa 1899.[2] In 1910, Mearns staged the play with the Plays and Players, an amateur theatrical group, and on March 27, 1922, the paper columnist FPA printed the verse form in "The Conning Belfry", his column in the New York World.[2] [iii] Mearns subsequently wrote many parodies of this verse form, giving them the full general title of Later Antigonishes.[4]
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't at that place!
He wasn't at that place again today,
Oh how I wish he'd become away![5]When I came home concluding night at three
The man was waiting in that location for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't yous come up dorsum any more!
Go abroad, get away, and please don't slam the door...Last night I saw upon the stair,
A piffling human being who wasn't there,
He wasn't there over again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away....
Utilize in media [edit]
- Father Brownish, Season 9, Episode 9, "The Enigma of Antigonish", the villain uses the poem as the thought behind a plot mechanism whereby a, suspect beingness already expressionless, wouldn't exist sought for the murders of several witnesses that had given evidence that resulted in the villain'due south past incarceration for another crime.
- Horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives focuses its 85th episode "Upon the Stair" on a paranormal entity inspired by the poem. The poem is mentioned and read aloud in the episode.
- In the miniseries Gallipoli, Season 1, Episode one, General, Sir Ian Hamilton recites the verse form.
- In the TV show Death in Paradise, Season 4, Episode ane "Stab In The Night", Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman references the poem while solving the murder of a distiller.
- In the TV show Fear the Walking Expressionless, Season three, Episode 6 "Called-for in H2o, Drowning in Flame (Fear the Walking Dead)", Madison Clark and other Bankrupt Jaw Ranch dwellers find a conscious human being with his encephalon exposed, reciting the poem out loud.
- In the Tv show Midsomer Murders, Season five, Episode 5 "Worm in the Bud", Main Detective Inspector Barnaby quotes the first stanza of the poem when mentioning the example he was working on fabricated no sense.
- In the Goggle box show Sapphire & Steel, Season ii, Episode x The kickoff stanza of the poem is heard three times in a ghost story virtually children trapped in photographs by a man (spirit) with no face.
- In the TV bear witness McDonald and Dodds, Flavour two, Episode ane The first stanza of the poem is spoken past two members of the Bathroom police during the investigation of a man who apparently plummeted to his decease, falling from a hot-air balloon.
- In The Trial of Christine Keeler, based on the concatenation of events surrounding the Profumo matter in the 1960s, Dr. Stephen Ward - played past James Norton - recites the poem several times.
- The movie Identity opens with convict Malcom Rivers reciting the poem, claiming to have made information technology upward when he was a kid. It'southward likewise the closing phrase in the flick.
- In the pic "The Haunting in Connecticut", Matt Campbell recites the verse form to his cousin.
- The poem is used in Stan Dane's book Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald to allude to enquiry that appears to points to suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as beingness the "prayer homo", a figure continuing on the forepart steps of the Texas School Volume Depository during the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy.[half dozen]
Vocal [edit]
- In 1939, "Antigonish" was adjusted equally a popular song titled "The Little Man Who Wasn't There", past Harold Adamson with music past Bernie Hanighen, both of whom received the songwriting credits.[iii]
- A July 12, 1939 recording of the vocal past the Glenn Miller Orchestra, with vocals by Tex Beneke, became an xi-week hit on Your Striking Parade and reached #7.
Other versions were recorded by:
- Mildred Bailey & Her Orchestra
- Larry Clinton & His Orchestra with vocals by Ford Leary
- Bob Crosby & His Orchestra with vocals by Teddy Grace
- Jack Teagarden & His Orchestra with vocals by Teagarden
- In 2016 The Odd Chap released an Electro Swing version using soundtrack from the Glenn Miller Band recording.
- In 2018, the experimental industrial group The Reptile Skins released an EP entitled Antigonish with the two lead singers having a different interpretation of the verse form.
- The opening verse is featured on the opening runway "Ytterligare ett steg närmare full jävla utfrysning" off the anthology Halmstad by Swedish ring Shining
Meet also [edit]
- Extensional and intensional definitions
- Plato's bristles
- The Homo Who Sold the World (song), a vocal by David Bowie
References [edit]
- ^ Colombo, John Robert (1984). Canadian Literary Landmarks. Dundurn Press. ISBN978-0-88882-073-0.
- ^ a b McCord, David Thompson Watson (1955). What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Poesy. New York: The Modernistic Library. p. 429.
- ^ a b Kahn, East. J. (September thirty, 1939). "Artistic Mearns". The New Yorker. p. 11.
- ^ Colombo (2000), p.47.
- ^ Mearns, quoted by Hayakawa, Samuel Ichiyé & Hayakawa, Alan R. (1990). Language in Thought and Action. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 96. ISBN9780156482400.
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- Mearns, quoted by Colombo, John Robert (2000). Ghost Stories of Canada. Dundurn. p. 46. ISBN9781550029758. . Italics and assertion points.
- Mearns, quoted past Gardner, Martin (2012). Best Remembered Poems. Courier. p. 107. ISBN9780486116402. - ^ Dane, Stan. Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald (Martian Publishing, 2015), p. 190. ISBN 1944205012
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigonish_(poem)
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