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CouCou Dish

Coucou you sing our freedom songs

And okra says it's true;

Singing Robyn, merci beaucoup!  

Surprise! No peek-a-boo.

True Bajans love the real coucou;

Served all year once a week;

Thursday is really coucou day;

Well done with real technique.

Corny mass floats on saucy sea;

Molded well on the plate;

And flying fish swim round its core;

Wingless yes! But sedate.

A salisbury steak I'm not;

Neither a duckanoo;

When saucy river round me flows;

You've got the real coucou.

Coucou you sing our freedom songs;

A wholesome dish so true;

Singing Robyn, merci beaucoup;

Surprise! No peekaboo.

CouCou is our national dish

Chopped okras glue the maize;

Carved firmly with a buttered mold,

Served on ironing days;

Our coucou sings cool pop tunes

Loud and sweet from the chest

Flying high all around the globe

Rihanna tops the nest.

At all cost we make pepper sauce

With spices from the land

Foreign brands too we use in stew

With industry we stand.

Coucou you sing our freedom songs

A wholesome dish so true;

Singing Robyn, merci beaucoup

Surprise! No peekaboo.

Food is the mainstay for all living beings after water. Mrs Carmeta Frazer former Food Promotion Officer at the Barbados Marketing Corporation now the Barbados Agricultural Development Corporation trumpeted the slogan “Food Comes First” was a strong advocate for local food production and the use of local produce in the preparation of dishes. Food is so important that even as far back as 3 000 B C poets wrote about food in all its various manifestations. The 20^th century poet Virginia Woolf wrote classically about it. Food is a timeless subject in poems and goes beyond its metaphoric use and poets relish writing about food literally and to reveal its universal quality and the never ending pleasure food brings.  The poem “Co Cou Dish” is also a food metaphor as well because a metaphor is face-value understanding and experiencing, and seeing that face-value understanding in terms of another thing.  This poem "CouCou" can be so many things for it brings into play the influence of the French in the islands of the West Indies, for example "Coucou" is not only the singing bird but a French word which in English means "Hello" or "Good Morning", "peekaboo" comes from the old French word "pique-a-beau", translating to resentment or one's lover, which accounts for the covering of one's face with the hands. This was often done to signal others in town that the coverer was upset at the coveree for some indiscretion and that the offending party was to be dragged off by a mob and beaten with sticks. The authentic French words "merci beaucoup" meaning "Thank You."

In Barbados, farmers are encouraged to buy local and artisanly  produced foods against the pressures of globalization in the food industry and as expected in the slogan the poem can be a food metaphor promoting all aspects of fine arts, culinary art as well as, the poem metaphorically promotes the survival f a variety of local and ethnic groups because community members experience and transmit their local identify in terms of food-related experiences. Food is a metaphor not only for a specific local identity in question, but also for political and cultural resistance.

In its literal sense "CouCou" is about the national dish of Barbados. Returning Nationals and tourists from around the globe often remark that they savor the epicurean delight whenever coucou and flying fish is on the menu, this truly authentic Bajan dish.  The imagery in this food poem makes reference to the pop-star Robyn Rihanna Fenty. The career of this singing super-star, born on February 20, 1988 in St Michael, Barbados has without doubt, elevated this 166 square mile island to the fore-front of the entertainment world. In recognition of this, the Government of Barbados showered on her the accolade of “Honorary Youth and Cultural Ambassador for Barbados”.

The poem “CouCou Dish” is written in ballad meter. The ballad is essentially a narrative poem with a stanza of four lines with a refrain stanza of necessity. The plot is the dominant feature of the ballad, dealing with a single crucial episode, narrated impersonally with frequent repetition and that’s where the refrain verses come into play. Traditionally, the ballad is written in straight forward verse seldom with detail but always with graphic simplicity and force. The ballad meter is derived by using alternating verses of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter followed by the last words of the second and fourth verses rhyming  in each stanza whereas the first and third verses in all the stanzas do not rhyme. This poem has multiple stanzas made up of six stanzas and a refrain stanza. The rhyming pattern reflected in all the seven stanzas are shown below:

Coucou you sing our freedom songs

And okra says it's true;

Singing Robyn, merci beaucoup!  

Surprise! No peek-a-boo.

True Bajans love the real cou cou;

Served all year once a \week\;

Thursday is really cou cou day;

Well done with real \technique\.

Corny mass floats on saucy sea;

Molded well on the /plate/;

And flying fish swim round its core;

Wingless yes! But /sedate/.

A salisbury steak I'm not;

Neither a ~duckanoo~;

When saucy river round me flows;

You've got the real ~cou cou~.

CouCou is our national dish

Chopped okras glue the maize;

Carved firmly with a buttered mold,

Served on ironing days;

Our coucou sings cool pop tunes

Loud and sweet from the chest

Flying high all around the globe

Rihanna tops the nest.

At all cost we make pepper sauce

With spices from the (land)

Foreign brands too we use in stew

With industry we (stand).

Notice that the rhyme scheme in the poem "CouCou Dish" shows that the end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses in stanza 1 do not rhyme with the end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses of all those stanzas that follow. For this simple reason, the rhyme scheme for "CouCou Dish" just cannot be xbyb but must take into account that end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses in stanza 1 do not rhyme with the end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses of all those stanzas that follow; hence, instead of merely xbyb rhyme scheme we have an expanded rhyme scheme xbyb xcyc xdyd xeye xfyf xgyg xhyh xiyi xjyj.

The rhyme scheme in "CouCou Dish" is much longer when compared with the rhyme scheme xbyb in "Bajan Conkies" as shown in the excerpt below:

When November comes to the door,                              

Zesty conkies we share;                                    

Sweet and mighty strong with essence;          

A Bajan dish set square.                                   

Pumpkin alone will never do;                                                           

Mix, corn, coconut fair,                                    

With potato, sugar and spice;                                          

Cook on square leaves with care.                   

Conkies wrapped in banana leaves;                               

Do pass the plate with cheer,                                           

To friends but satellites of none;                     

Great cheese-on-bread is there.                       

Stacked independently on plate,                     

Conkies banana wear;                                                      

Housed in jacket uniquely ours;                      

We stacked on tableware;                                               

Skilled fingers cut those leaves to strap,         

From stalk with sharp hardware;                   

Laboring these souls toiled each day,                             

In cane-fields near Foursquare;

Notice that the xbyb rhyme scheme in this poem "Bajan Conkies" shows that the end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses in stanza 1 rhyme with the end-rhymes in the second and fourth verses of all those stanzas that follow. The xbyb rhyme scheme is the shortest rhyme scheme in English Language poetry.

Click on this Link to read all the verses in "Bajan Conkies"

Forms of Poetry: The Ballad

The ballad form must not to be confused with the ballade.

The ballade typically consists of three eight-verse stanzas, each with a consistent meter, and a particular rhyme scheme. The last verse in the stanza is a refrain, and the stanzas are followed by a four-verse concluding envoi usually addressed to a prince. The rhyme scheme is usually ababbcbC ababbcbC ababbcbC, bcbC, the upper-case C is the refrain. The ballade is particularly associated with French poetry of the 14th and 15th Centuries.

The ballad is a narrative poem with a stanza of four verses. Of necessity it has a refrain, burden or chorus. The story line for the ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter but frequently deals with folklore or popular legends. The ballads by the Barbadian group, The Merry Men incorporate folklore and legends. ‘Sam Lord’ is a popular Bajan legend being sung by the Merry Men. The earliest recognition of the ballad form in England goes back to the poem ‘Judas’ in the thirteenth Century. This ancient ballad explains the expulsion from the ‘Garden of Eden’ and the ‘crucifixion of Christ’ due to the dishonesty of women. Hmm! The sexist movement would probably have a field day on this and who could blame them. The plot is a dominant feature of the ballad, dealing with a single crucial episode, narrated impersonally with frequent repetition and that’s where the refrain verses come into the picture. The ballad is written in straight forward verse seldom with detail but always with graphic simplicity and force.

In this 21st Century there is much variation in the ballad form as seen in the various ballad styles with respect to length, number of verses and rhyming scheme. Most ballads are narrative with a self-contained story, often concise and relying on imagery. The classification of ballads falls into such categories as the Traditional ballad, Broadside ballad, Literary ballad or Lyrical ballad, Blues ballad, Bush ballad, Sentimental ballad, Jazz blues and traditional pop, Pop and Rock ballads.

Traditional (classical or popular) ballads: Robin Hood is a classic example Scholarly attempts have assorted traditional ballads into themes commonly identified as religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous. Their structure uses what is known as the Ballad meter and the Common meter.

The Common meter is a poetic meter consisting of four verses which alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter and uses a rhyme scheme abab. The Scottish folkloric legend Tam Lin is in Common meter as well as the hymn, Amazing Grace and the carol, O Little town of Bethlehem.

The variant of the Common meter is the Ballad meter. Like Common meter, it has stanzas of four iambic verses. The difference is that the Ballad meter is less regular and more conversational than Common meter and does not necessarily rhyme both sets of verses. Only the second and fourth verses must rhyme in Ballad meter in the pattern xbyb. It can be accentual-syllabic, as iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, or it can be Podia with variable numbers of unaccented syllables. The rhyme scheme is often approximations, with assonance and consonance frequently appearing.

Iambic tetrameter consists of four metrical feet per verse, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

The iambic trimeter consists of three metrical feet per verse, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

In English poetry, the unit of meter is the foot. Metrical verses are named for the constituent foot and for the number of feet in the verse. So we have got a listing that looks like this:

Monometer is one foot
Dimeter is two feet
Trimeter is three feet
Tetrameter is four feet
Pentameter is five feet
Hexameter is six feet
Heptameter is seven feet
Octameter is eight feet
Nonameter is nine feet
Decameter is ten feet

Iambic comes from the word, Iamb and is the most common metrical foot in English and other languages as well. It is made up of a short or unstressed (unaccented) syllable followed by a long or stressed (accented) syllable. Take these two examples: attack; the mind.

There are two syllables in attack. The first syllable (at/) is short and the second syllable (tack) is long hence attack measures one iambic foot.

In the phrase, the mind there is one syllable in the word, the; one syllable in the word, mind. The first word in the phrase is short and the second word in the phrase is long therefore the phrase measures one iambic foot.

A phrase is a group of words that does not have both a subject and a predicate and therefore cannot stand as a clause or sentence.

A sentence is a group of words that makes complete sense, contains a main verb, and begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop; or the equivalent such as a question mark (?) or an exclamation mark (!)

In metered poetry a stanza is made up of verses. Four verses making a stanza is called a quatrain. The quatrain is most popular in English poetry. In unmetered poetry, unit is used instead of stanza, and a Unit is made up of lines not verses.

Broadside ballads are usually associated with chapbooks

Literary ballads or Lyrical ballads are easily associated with the Romantic Movement from the later eighteenth century. Poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde easily fit into this category.

Ballad Operas do include Gilbert and Sullivan light operas

Native American ballads are many but as an exemplar let’s stay with Jesse James

Blue ballads derived from fusing Anglo-American and Afro-American styles. Casey Jones is a good example.

Bush ballads from “in the land down under” are transplants from Britain and Ireland. Their ballads nowadays tend to focus on trucking stories more so than ballads about the wide open lands of Australia where class conflict between landless folks, squatters and outlaws were the norm.

Sentimental ballads were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic, songs as part of the opera. My favorite from this category is Danny Boy.

Jazz blues and traditional pop bring to my mind, Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood and Always by Irving Berlin.

Pop and Rock ballads are mostly associated with love songs. A popular one in this grouping from 1984 is I want to know what love is by the band Foreigner’s and 2008 hit Umbrella by Rihanna the Barbadian pop singer.

The ballad poems below show their poetical structure and style. To read them just double-click on the title.

Bajan Conkies
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb

Cou Cou
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb

Indian Corn
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb

Sea Eggs
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb

The Christmas Candle Tree
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb

The White House Ballad
Poetic Form: Traditional Ballad
Style: Ballad Meter
Rhyme Scheme: abcb