Not my Best Side
I
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
II
It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.
III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.
Commentary
There is a refreshing feel about the whole poem. I suppose when you look
at it, you could say it boils down to the story of a boy and a girl in a painted world. I feel sorry for the dragon though. Why does it have to be engulfed in that pathetic microcosm of our world just to enable another two mentally superior apes to continue with their mundane existence?
— Vijay
Show 9 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Meg Worley · 26 May 2000
It’s an interesting genre, this new-perspective-on-old-tropes thang. (Other examples offhand: Gardner’s Grendel and Ciardi’s The King Who Saved Himself From Being Saved in the medieval category, and Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and somebody’s [Coetzee?] Foe later on.) I tend to read them as comments on the relationship between the present (“Ain’t we so postironic!”) and that old stale past. –meg
Petrie France · 6 October 2001
I would like to know what you could tell me about the challenging stereotypes in this poem.
Rab1122 · 8 November 2001
BRILLIANT POEM - STUDIED IT AT SCHOOL AND THOUROUGHLY ENJOYED IT!!!!! ONE OF THE BEST POEMS I’VE READ!!!!!
FROM RACHEL
UMAODEDRA · 16 March 2002
does anyone have any information on the analysis of this poem for the GCSE exam?
Dragon Dave · 13 November 2002
This poem had a marked effect on me when I was studying it at GCSE… essentially it boils down to three perceptions of a single event: an vain (in the sense of beauty), detached dragon; a nymphomaniac virgin and an immature knight who is vain in the sense of believing that he is the epitome of the best the world can offer.
It should be noted that this poem is associated with an painting by Uccello: [broken link] http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/WebMedia/Images/62/NG6294/eNG6294.jpg
cheerfulsakib · 2 December 2002
does anybody have any notes on ‘not my best side’? if so, pls mail me at thanks
The Happy Reaper · 5 June 2003
Yarg; I can’t stand this poem. The whole New Generation, ‘taking the past and making it relevant by using ‘surprising’ voices,’ thing has been done once too often, and it was never anything much more than a gimmick in the first place. It always feels fake to me.
Peter
Celine · 22 April 2004
I thought the peom was good, especially if you are looking at the picture about which it was written as you read it (Saint George and the Dragon). We also had to study it in our english class, and I enjoyed doing that immensely. Even so, it is true the whole ‘rewriting old stories in a different way to point out the steriotypes used’ is done way too often.
Paula Balzan · 29 November 2007
I was reading through the site of Not my Best Side and saw your comment about help for GCSE on this poem by U.A. Fanthorpe, do you have any notes on the poem as I need to do a monologue and I can`t do it.
Thanks