(19 October 1997)
Now and then one feels inspired to feast upon morally uplifting poetry that one can really sink one's teeth into
great classical works from the Western canon, perhaps, such as Paradise Lost or "The Song of Hiawatha."
Then again, sometimes ya just wanna kick back and relax with a light-verse snack.
If you're in the mood for Deep Meaningful Verse this week, you'd better try elsewhere. But if you feel like munching on a quick bowl of doggerel (and I use the word in the nicest possible sense), seasoned with a pinch of rhyme, a dash of rhythm, and plenty of silliness, you've come to the right place.
This week's poems are mostly in praise of various thingseven if the praise is sometimes puzzling or ambiguous. This one, for instance, appeared anonymously one day on the chalkboard in the drama room at my high school:
Some years later, during a dinner which involved a certain red root vegetable, a pastiche on the above came to me; my dinner companions were, alas, not amused.
If one may praise the lowly beet, why not other lowly creatures?
This one isn't in quite the same vein, but it more or less fits the ambiguous-praise theme anyway:
Mason Williams wrote a number of poems, in a particular form, in praise of such oddities as lunch toters, toad suckers, and moose goosers. He recorded them on a 1964 album called Them Poems. The form has inspired numerous imitations and parodies, of which the following is my favorite:
(after Mason Williams)
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