Humorous Poems – Dec 16, 2019

Our readers look forward to the last session of the year because it is tinged with levity, and uplifted by the effervescence of the holiday season to come. We deliberately choose poems that evoke absurdity and a sense of childhood fun.

Saras, Pamela, KumKum arriving at Arundhaty’s home

Arundhaty & Pamela

The occasion was combined with the birthday celebration of Arundhaty, and she kindly invited us to be guests in her home for the event and recite by the Chillavanoor river bank. As before we were expected to attend in droll costumes and wear incongruity as a badge. Spurred on by reminders, the readers turned out in great splashes of colour, the men rivalling the women. The photos will attest to their uninhibited display. 

Thommo, Pamela, & Devika

Pamela, Devika, Geetha, Shoba, Saras

The poets included famous names like T. S. Eliot and Edward Lear, children's poets such as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl, and much less known poets, for example, Edgar Albert Guest, who wrote an incredible 11,000 poems in his lifetime! We become familiar with the full range of poetry only when we include sessions such as this that give a special place to poems that display wit and audacious rhymes to delight the reader – as Ogden Nash does.

Arundhaty, KumKum

Thommo, Pamela

After the session Arundhaty and her sister-in-law, Suvarna, laid out a feast of eats very artistically showcased: conical veg sandwiches, micro idlis spiced, gulab jamun, home-baked chocolate cake, murukku, banana chips, etc. We went away satiated, wishing each other for the Christmas season but still in awe of the wonderful poetry we had listened to.  

Thommo, Geetha, Pamela, KumKum, Devika, Shoba, Saras, Arundhaty, Geeta

Geetha

Here we are outside the house on Arundhaty's lawn for the obligatory group shot to round off the reading:

The next reading will be on Friday Jan 31, 2020 to read Beloved by Toni Morrison. 

Here are some photos of the birthday eats that followed the reading in Arundhaty's home:

The artistic spread

Suvarna (Arundhaty’s sil), Priya, KumKum

Sandeep (Arundhaty’s brother), Kavita, Geetha

Thommo, KumKum, Saras, Devika

Saras, Devika

1. KumKum
She read a short poem by a poet who wished the reference to his name and work be deleted from this post.

2. Devika
Devika read the poem Café Comedy by Robert William Service, which is a romantic comedy between two people who set up a date, each exaggerating their youth, when both are past their prime.

She thinks
But I am thirty-nine and in despair,
Wanting a home and children ere too late,
And I forget I'm no more young and fair

He confesses to himself
Ah! what deceivers are we aging men!
What vanity keeps youthful hope aglow!
Poor girl! I sent a photo taken when
I was a student, twenty years ago.

The woman hides the rose she was to wear as identification, the man hides the flower he was to wear. The hours pass, their mutual hope declines, then each espies the other’s hidden flower and
Their eyes were joined and in a flash they knew. . .
The sleepy waiter saw, when time to close,
The sweet romance of those deceiving two,
Whose lips were joined, their hearts, their future too.

Biography of Robert W. Service (1874–1958)

Robert William Service, the renowned poet of the Yukon, was born in Lancashire, England, on January 16, 1874. The son of a bank cashier, Service was the eldest of four siblings. At the age of five, Service went to Scotland to live with his grandfather and three young aunts, who showered him with attention. A year later, on his sixth birthday, he wrote his first poem.

Service re-joined his family in 1883 when they moved north to Glasgow, Scotland. He attended several of Scotland’s finest schools, where he developed a deep interest in books and poetry, along with a sharp wit and a way with words. A well-rounded teenager, Service also played fullback on his high school’s rugby team.

Service’s innate curiosity and fondness for adventure stories inspired an urge to travel—to go off to sea and to see the world. Although his parents discouraged this adolescent ambition, his desire wasn’t extinguished (and would one day be fulfilled). Service bided his time with assorted jobs—one at a shipping office that soon closed down, then another following his father’s footsteps in a position at a suburban branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Working under light supervision, Service managed to pass the day, reading material he’d snuck in: Robert Browning, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and John Keats.

Service developed into an excellent student of poetry and attended the University of Glasgow to study English Literature. He was quickly identified as one of the brightest in his class, though he also proved to be a bit audacious. His essay on Ophelia's questionable "purity" in Hamlet was received with disgust by his professor, who called Service’s interpretation of the text obscene. Not content with such a response, Service challenged the professor to a fight outside the classroom; the challenge was declined. After a year, the embittered young poet left the university.

Soon his interests realigned with his aims for adventure. His reading turned to Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, and their stories of world explorers in search of fortune and, more important, their own identity. In 1895, at the age of twenty-one, with a significant amount of savings, Robert announced his dream of going to Western Canada to become a cowboy. He soon set sail for Montreal with only his suitcase and a letter of reference from the bank in tow.

Upon arrival, Service took a train across Canada to Vancouver Island, where he lived for many years and gathered much of the material for what became his most celebrated poems. His experiences working on cowboy ranches, and the colourful personalities he met during his travels around the West, eventually found their place in his work.

Numerous publications followed, including Songs of a Sourdough, published in 1907, which won wide acclaim. His forty-five verse collections accumulated over one thousand poems, the most famous of which include The Cremation of Sam McGee, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and The Men That Don’t Fit In. To add to his poetic output, Service wrote two autobiographies, Ploughman of the Moon (1945) and Harper of Heaven (1948), as well as six novels. His poem about Dan McGrew and several of his novels were adapted to film. The poet himself managed even to garner an acting credit, appearing briefly opposite Marlene Dietrich in the 1942 movie The Spoilers.

Service served as an ambulance driver during World War I, after which he published Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Barse & Hopkins, 1916), a collection of mostly war poems. He later married a French woman, Germaine Bougeoin, and the two lived in Europe, in the south of France, until the poet’s death in 1958. By then, his prolific and prosperous career in poetry had earned him the distinction—as stated in an obituary in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph—as “the people’s poet.”

He died in Lancieux, France, on September 11, 1958.

3. Shoba
Shoba read two poems by Shel Silverstein, The Generals and Crocodile's Toothache. They are taken from the book Where the Sidewalk Ends, which Shoba brought along to display the cartoons that the poet-cartoonist draws to accompany each poem. 

Two opposing generals, Clay and Gore, decide to take a break from a silly war to visit the beach, but some slight excuse (lack of beach wear) makes them give up the idea and return to war:

... bullets flew and cannons roared.

And now, alas! there is no more

Of General Clay or General Gore.

The second one, on the Crocodile's Toothache, was even more hilarious. The dentist keeps pulling teeth out of the jaws of the croc until he makes a mistake:

Oops, that's the wrong one, I confess.

But what's one crocodile's tooth, more or less?'

Then suddenly the jaws went snap,

And the dentist was gone right off the map.

Shoba reading

Shel Silverstein was born in 1930 and he died of a heart attack in 1999. He was a cartoonist, singer-songwriter, author and poet. Born into a Jewish family, he grew up in Chicago.

He attended the university of Illinois, from which he was expelled. He started out as a cartoonist for the magazine Playboy. He says that he never planned to write or draw for kids. A friend of his practically dragged him, kicking and screaming into the editor s office. Ursula Nordstrom, the editor, convinced him that he could do it.

Shel Silverstein (1930 – 1999)

He composed the original music for several films, playing the guitar, piano and, saxophone. He wrote the lyrics for Johnny Cash’s A boy named Sue and 25 minutes to go. Thommo narrated the story of the very popular song 25 minutes to go which is about a young man’s quest for revenge on a father who abandoned him at age three. The only contribution to his son's life was naming him Sue, a feminine name, which results in the young man suffering ridicule and harassment in his travels.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Giving Tree,  and A Light in the Attic are some of the books by Shel Silverstein.

Here's a short  poem by him:

The saddest thing I ever did see,

Was a woodpecker peckin

at a plastic tree.

He looks at me, and “Friend”, says he,
“Things ain’t as sweet as they used to be”. 

4. Saras
Saras recited The Three Little Pigs by Roald Dahl, which is his take on the familiar story, and combines it with the story of Little Red Riding Hood to make a composite with a sinister ending. The Wolf as usual huffs and puffs and blows the house down of the pigs, but in a gory way:
Wolf huffed and puffed and blew and blew.
The house stayed up as good as new.
'If I can't blow it down,' Wolf said,
I'll have to blow it up instead.
I'll come back in the dead of night
And blow it up with dynamite!'
...

Along comes the heroine
A short while later, through the wood,
Came striding brave Miss Riding Hood.
The Wolf stood there, his eyes ablaze,
And yellowish, like mayonnaise.
His teeth were sharp, his gums were raw,
And spit was dripping from his jaw.

The pig thought he was being saved. However, says Red Riding Hood:
Ah, Piglet, you must never trust
Young ladies from the upper crust.
For now, Miss Riding Hood, one notes,
Not only has two wolfskin coats,
But when she goes from place to place,
She has a PIGSKIN TRAVELING CASE.

Saras reading

As someone observed the Brothers Grimm wrote really grim tales of horror for children, but that does not mean Roald Dahl can't go one better!

Arundhaty supplied Dahl’s bio at this point, as she was going to recite another of his poems later.

Roald Dahl, was a skilled writer who published numerous novels, short stories, and poems, as well as some screenplays. The famous one is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – while the story was written by Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for this classic movie.

He is most famous for his children’s books. He also was proud of his stories for children. Some of his most loved books are: 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Danny the Champion of the World

Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Gremlins  and many others. 

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff, Wales. He had a total of six biological and step sisters, one of whom died when he was only three. His father also died when he was just three .

He was a prolific reader. He began writing at an early age by keeping a private journal from the age of eight. His school experiences left him miserable. Recording the events in his journal helped him lay the groundwork for his later stories, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. There was a factory nearby that made Cadbury chocolates, and allowed children to sample their newest confections.

At the age of 18, he decided to skip college, and instead went with the Public Schools Exploring Society expedition to Newfoundland. At the age of 23 when WWII broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force.

Unexpected Entrance Into Writing

Roald Dahl did not start out writing children’s books. Following the war, he was invited to lunch by C.S. Forester, author of the novel Captain Hornblower. Forester asked him to write about his war experiences, thinking of it as a sort of introduction to his skills. He was so impressed by the writing quality that he didn’t change a word, and got the Post magazine to pay Dahl $900 for publishing it.

In 1943, Dahl’s first children’s book was published. It was a picture book called The Gremlins, which had been commissioned by Walt Disney as a book version of a movie script. Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady  of the US (FLOTUS) was highly impressed by the book, and quickly befriended the writer. More children’s stories didn’t appear from his pen until the 1960’s, after he had had his own children. He used to tell his stories to his daughters at night, and these later became beloved children’s books.

Dahl focused on writing short stories for adults, publishing them in magazines such as New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Atlantic Monthly.

Roald Dahl’s biography would not be complete without mentioning his legacy beyond his stories. Because his son, Neal, was brain-damaged after an accident, he helped to invent a valve that drained the excess fluid from his cranium – known as the Dahl-Walde-Till valve. It has since been replaced by better technology, but was in use for several years.

His oldest daughter, Olivia, developed a bout of measles that turned into encephalitis, or an inflammation of the brain. As a result, she died at the age of seven. His first wife, actress Patricia Neal, suffered three strokes when pregnant with their daughter Lucy. Dahl kept her occupied, motivated, and helped her along to a full recovery. A few months before Roald Dahl died, his stepdaughter, Lorina, died of a brain tumour. Roald Dahl’s own death took place on November 23, 1990.

All of these neurological tragedies, in conjunction with a strong desire to inspire literacy, and his own battle with a blood disorder, resulted in the posthumous creation of the Roald Dahl Foundation. It continues Dahl’s philanthropic efforts by providing grants in the areas of literacy, neurology, and haematology.

5. Geetha

Geetha’s selection was a poem called Common Cold by Ogden Nash, written when the disease overwhelmed his swollen nostrils:

Bacilli swarm within my portals

Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,

But bred by scientists wise and hoary

In some Olympic laboratory;

Geetha reading

Frederic Ogden Nash (19.8.1902 –19.5.1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry. 

He was born in Rye, New York. Throughout his life, Nash loved to rhyme. He had a fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist. His family lived briefly in Savannah in Georgia after which Nash entered Harvard University in 1920, only to drop out a year later. He returned as a teacher to St. George's for one year and then returned to New York. There, he took up selling bonds, about which Nash reportedly quipped, “Came to New York to make my fortune as a bond salesman and in two years sold one bond—to my godmother. However, I saw lots of good movies.” 

Ogden Nash said he thought in terms of Rhyme from the age of six

Nash then took a position as a writer of streetcar card advertisements for Barron Collier, a company that previously had employed another Baltimore resident, F. Scott Fitzgerald. While working as an editor at Doubleday, he submitted some short rhymes to The New Yorker. The Editor wrote back asking Nash for more, saying “They are about the most original stuff we have had lately.’’ Nash spent three months in 1931 working on the editorial staff for The New Yorker.

In 1931 he married Frances Leonard. He published his first collection of poems, Hard Lines, that same year, earning him national recognition. Some of his poems reflected an anti-establishment feeling. For example, one verse, titled Common Sense, asks: 

Why did the Lord give us agility,

If not to evade responsibility?

In 1934, Nash moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained until his death in 1971. Nash thought of Baltimore as home. After his return from a brief move to New York, he wrote, recalling Richard Lovelace, 

I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more.

When Nash wasn't writing poems, he made guest appearances on comedy and radio shows and toured the United States and the United Kingdom, giving lectures at colleges and universities. Among his most popular writings were a series of animal verses, many of which featured his off-kilter rhyming devices. Examples include: 

If called by a panther 

Don't anther

Who wants my jellyfish?

I'm not sellyfish!

The one-L lama, he's a priest. 

The two-L llama, he's a beast. 

And I will bet a silk pajama: there isn't any three-L lllama!

Joe added that Nash had a footnote in his book of poems to the effect that the New York Fire Department classifies fires according to the number of alarms. The note read: “The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.”

Here are more Clever Quips from Ogden Nash.

Nash died at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital  on May 19, 1971.  At the time of his death in 1971, The New York Times said his “droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.”

6. Joe

Joe read from an early poem of T.S. Eliot (before his conversion to the Anglican Church) written in 1919 and published in his 1920 collection, Poems. It satirises the Church comparing it to the broad-backed hippopotamus, and was directly inspired by Théophile Gautier’s poem L'Hippopotame which begins

L'hippopotame au large ventre

Habite aux Jungles de Java,

Où grondent, au fond de chaque antre,

Plus de monstres qu-on n'en rêva.

Joe reading (photo courtesy Geetha)

The hippo is depicted as innocent and morally unsullied while the church is shown as striding the world of God and Mammon. The absolute ear for rhyme Eliot possessed is in evidence in this early work written in quatrains rhymed abab:

The hippo’s feeble steps may err

In compassing material ends,

While the True Church need never stir

To gather in its dividends.

The final quatrain sets its seal on the virtue of the ungainly beast and the corruption of the Church:

He shall be washed as white as snow,

By all the martyr’d virgins kist,

While the True Church remains below

Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

The final line is wonderful. There are many references in this poem to the Gospels and in his usual cryptic manner Eliot throws in epigraphs in classical languages (here Latin, without translation) and the second one in English is a private joke (“And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”). Writing to his mother at the time, Eliot noted that this very poem was read by him – “some light satirical stuff” to aid a charity in the home of Sybil Colefax, a London society celebrity.

You can listen to Sir Alec Guinness on Youtube reciting this poem in his crisp masterly manner.

T.S. Eliot – A brief bio

Born: 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. Died: 1965 in London, England.

He was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, of a New England family, the last of six children, somewhat sickly. Eliot was first tutored in private. He entered Harvard in 1906 and finished his degree in three years. He edited the Harvard Advocate which published the fiction, poetry and prose of Harvard undergraduates.

He wanted to do a post-graduate degree in Philosophy, but twice interrupted his study, first at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then with a scholarship to study in Germany. When World War I broke out, he transferred to Oxford where he met Ezra Pound (1885–1972), the young American poet, and formed a lifelong bond of friendship and mentorship. After Oxford he taught at a school briefly and then joined Lloyd’s Bank in London. He married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915; the marriage turned into a disaster gradually because she was mentally unstable, and later she had to be institutionalised.

In 1917 his first volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, appeared and almost immediately it became the conversation piece of the London literary scene.

Eliot served as literary editor of the Egoist, a feminist magazine, from 1917 to 1919. He also wrote anonymous reviews for the London Times and published critical essays. In 1919 one of his most influential pieces appeared, Tradition and the Individual Talent. Some of his early critical essays were The Sacred Wood (1920), and The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933).

The Waste Land

While recovering from exhaustion in 1921, Eliot wrote The Waste Land, perhaps the most influential poem of the twentieth century. The dissolution of society is compared with a shattered wasteland. In 1922 Eliot founded the Criterion, a small magazine that appeared until 1939 and became extremely influential. A number of new poets were first published there. He left Lloyd's Bank in 1925 and joined the publisher Faber and Faber, eventually rising to the position of director.

Religious and cultural views

In 1927 Eliot became an Anglo-Catholic by baptism and a British citizen. Ash Wednesday (1930) is the title of a six-part poem that refers to the beginning of Lent.

Plays: In the play The Rock Eliot combined narrative prose with poetic dialogue. In 1935 Murder in the Cathedral, perhaps Eliot's best play, was produced at Canterbury Cathedral. More plays followed: The Family Reunion, in 1939; The Cocktail Party (1940); The Confidential Clerk(1954); etc.

Four Quartets

The first of the Four Quartets (Burnt Norton) was published in 1936 in which Eliot makes use of his repeated rose-garden symbolism, growing out of a visit to a deserted Gloucestershire mansion. This poem was followed by three others, each named after a place. East Coker (1940) is set in the village of Eliot's Massachusetts ancestors. The theme, developed differently, is the same in each quartet: One may seek or wait in any place at any time, for God is in all places at all times.

Midway through his composition of Four Quartets, Eliot published Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) written for the daughter of a friend. His humor and wit (always present in conversation) are demonstrated abundantly in this piece of fabulous invention. In the end it became the most valuable work in his legacy from the royalties earned when the the musical Cats, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, premiered in London in 1981, sixteen years after his death. It ran for twenty years there and eighteen on Broadway, New York.

Honour and old age

In 1947 Eliot's first wife died. In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize and the British Order of Merit, and the list of his honours continued to grow. In 1957 Eliot married his private secretary, Valerie Fischer, and remained married very happily until his death on January 4, 1965, in London☨.

Many poets and artists paid final tribute to T. S. Eliot, including Ezra Pound who called him “A grand poet and brotherly friend.” Eliot had hailed him as Il miglior fabbro (the better craftsman) in the epigraph to The Waste Land.

(based on https://www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/Eliot-T-S.html)

T.S. Eliot and Valerie Fletcher

☨ A Dedication To My Wife by T.S. Eliot

To whom I owe the leaping delight

That quickens my senses in our waking time

And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleeping time,

the breathing in unison.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other

Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,

And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill

No sullen tropic sun shall wither

The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:

These are private words addressed to you in public.

(In the edition of his play, The Elder Statesman, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote this dedicatory poem in 1957 to his second wife, Valerie (Esme Valerie Fletcher, 1926-2012))

7. Pamela

Pamela reading

Pamela also chose a poem by Ogden Nash, To My Valentine. It's not one of his rollicking best. It attempts to declare the love of a man for a woman in terms of the strengths of sensations opposed to love: as a criminal hates a clue, as a toothache hurts, as a a juggler hates a shove, as the sting of a wasp, etc. 

What about his imaginative poems, like

The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks

Which practically conceal its sex.

I think it clever of the turtle

In such a fix to be so fertile.

You can access 150 or more of his poems in PDF on poemhunter.com and here are scores of his witty quotations also in PDF. Here's another hippopotamus poem, this time by Nash:

Behold the hippopotamus!

We laugh at how he looks to us,

And yet in moments dank and grim,

I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!

We really look all right to us,

As you no doubt delight the eye

Of other hippopotami. 

There's a highly readable thesis on Ogden Nash with details difficult to find elsewhere; it includes a number of his poems. Nelly Rocío Cárdenas Guamán and Diana Azucena Zhagüi Tenesaca are the authors.

8. Zakia

Zakia read the famous poem The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear. What a charming tale it is!

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

...

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?"

...

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

Zakia reading

Runcible spoon  has entered the Oxford English Dictionary and is defined there as “a type of spoon; (in later use) a kind of fork, curved like a spoon and typically having three broad prongs, one of which has a sharp edge.”

Zakia also recited the The Quangle Wangle’s Hat which has several layers of meaning according to her. But it has never acquired the popularity of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, or of the poem The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, a superb absurdity, which begins:

On the Coast of Coromandel

   Where the early pumpkins blow,

      In the middle of the woods

   Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Two old chairs, and half a candle,

One old jug without a handle--

      These were all his worldly goods,

      In the middle of the woods,

      These were all his worldly goods,

   Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,

   Of the Yonghy-Bonghy Bo.

Edward Lear (1812–1888)

Portrait of Edward Lear

He was a poet and painter known for his absurd wit. He began his career as an artist at age 15. Young Lear was forced to earn a living when his father was sent to debtor's prison. He quickly gained recognition for his work and in 1832 was hired by the London Zoological Society to execute illustrations of birds. In the same year, the Earl of Derby invited Lear to reside at his estate; Lear ended up staying on until 1836.

His first book of poems, A Book of Nonsense (1846) was composed for the grandchildren of the Derby household. Around 1836 Lear decided to devote himself exclusively to landscape painting (although he continued to compose light verse). Between 1837 and 1847 Lear traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

After his return to England, Lear's travel journals were published in several volumes as The Illustrated Travels of a Landscape Painter. Popular and respected in his day, Lear's travel books have largely been ignored in the twentieth century. Rather, Lear is remembered for his humorous poems, such as The Owl and the Pussycat, and as the creator of the form and meter of the modern limerick. Like his younger peer Lewis Carroll, Lear wrote many deeply fantastical poems about imaginary creatures, such as The Dong with the Luminous Nose. His books of humorous verse also include Nonsense Songs (1871) and Laughable Lyrics (1877). Lear died on January 29, 1888 at the age of 76.

His irreverent view of the world marked his works. Lear poked fun at everything, including himself in By Way of a Preface. Many critics view Lear's devotion to the ridiculous as a method for dealing with or undermining the all-pervasive orderliness and industriousness of Victorian society. Regardless of whence it arose, the humour of Lear's poems has proved irrefutably timeless.

(Taken from https://poets.org/poet/edward-lear)

9. Arundhaty

Arundhaty who gave the biographical sketch of Dahl earlier, recited Cinderella by Roald Dahl. This poem, like many other fairy tale poems has been made more deadly and murderous for dramatic effect. One of the Ugly sisters tries on the slipper:

'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!

'So now you've got to marry me!'

The Prince went white from ear to ear.

He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'

'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!

'There's no way you can back out now!'

'Off with her head!' The Prince roared back.

They chopped it off with one big whack.

Arundhaty reading

The same happens to sister number two. Seeing all this gore and bloodthirsty behaviour Cinderella is put off and settles for an ordinary guy; she

Was married to a lovely feller,

A simple jam maker by trade,

Who sold good home-made marmalade.

Their house was filled with smiles and laughter

And they were happy ever after.

10. Priya

Priya chose to read from the children's book by Dr. Seuss.

She read an abridged version of the book since time was short. But the full version can be read here in PDF. 

Priya reading

The story goes like this. Inside a snowflake exists the magical land of Whoville. In Whoville, live the Whos, an almost mutated sort of munchkin-like people. All the Whos love Christmas, yet just outside of their beloved Whoville lives the Grinch. The Grinch is a nasty creature that hates Christmas, and plots to steal it away from the Whos whom he abhors equally. Yet a small child, Cindy Lou Who, decides to try and befriend the Grinch. There's a happy ending to this Christmas story.

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991)

Dr. Seuss models some characters from his books for children in 1959

Dr. Seuss published over 60 books. The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham were among his most famous works. Dr. Seuss (full name Theodor Seuss Geisel) published his first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, under his pen-name of Dr. Seuss in 1937. Next came a string of bestsellers, including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. His rhymes and characters are beloved by generations of fans.

Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, Theodor Robert Geisel, was a successful brewmaster. At age 18, Geisel left home to attend Dartmouth College, where he became the editor in chief of its humour magazine, Jack-O-Lantern. When Geisel and his friends were caught drinking in his dorm room one night, in violation of Prohibition law, he was kicked off the magazine staff, but continued to contribute to it using the pseudonym “Seuss.”

After graduating from Dartmouth, Geisel attended the University of Oxford in England, with plans to eventually become a professor. In 1927, he dropped out of Oxford. Upon returning to America, Geisel decided to pursue cartooning full-time. His articles and illustrations were published in numerous magazines, including LIFE and Vanity Fair. A cartoon that he published in the July 1927 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, his first using the pen-name “Seuss,” landed him a staff position at the New York weekly, Judge.

Geisel next worked in advertising for the next 15 years. His ad for Flit, a popular insecticide, became nationally famous. Around this time, Viking Press offered Geisel a contract to illustrate a children's collection called Boners. The book sold poorly, but it gave him a break into children's literature.

At the start of World War II, Geisel began contributing weekly political cartoons to the liberal publication PM Magazine. In 1942, too old for the World War II draft, Geisel served with Frank Capra's Signal Corps, making animated training films and drawing propaganda posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board.

After the war, Seuss and his wife, Helen, purchased an old observation tower in La Jolla, California, where he would write for at least eight hours a day, taking breaks to tend his garden. Over the following five decades, Geisel would write many books, some in a new, simplified vocabulary style, and others using his older, more elaborate technique.

A major turning point in Geisel's career came when, in response to a 1954 LIFE magazine article that criticized children's reading levels, Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked him to write a children's primer using just 220 vocabulary words. The resulting book, The Cat in the Hat, was published in 1957 and was described by one critic as a “tour de force.” Its success cemented Geisel's place in children's literature.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957)

“Every Who down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot . . . but the Grinch, who lived just north of Who-ville, did NOT!” For 53 years, the Grinch has lived in a cave on the side of the mountain. This tale, where citizens of Who-ville warm the Grinch to the spirit of Christmas, encourages young readers to do their own good deeds. 

The book was successful in the 1950s and 1960s but became an instant holiday classic when it was released in 1966 as a made-for-TV cartoon special featuring the voice of Boris Karloff.

Green Eggs and Ham (1960)

“Do you like green eggs and ham?” 

“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.” 

The book is written for early readers, with simple words, rhymes and lots of illustrations.

Geisel won numerous awards for his work, including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, three Emmys and three Grammys.
Geisel met his future wife, Helen Palmer, while studying at Oxford. The couple married in 1927 and moved back to the United States the same year. Palmer was suffering from cancer and the emotional pain caused by an affair Geisel had with their longtime friend, Audrey Stone Dimond. In October 1967, she committed suicide. 

Geisel married Dimond, a film producer. She is known for her work on the films The Lorax (2012), Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and Daisy-Head Mayzie (1995).

Geisel never had any children of his own. He died on September 24, 1991, at the age of 87, in La Jolla, California. 

(Taken from https://www.biography.com/writer/dr-seuss)

11. Geeta

Geeta's choice was the poem Happiness (Reconsidered) by Judith Viorst. The woman poet defines happiness thus: 

Happiness

Is falling asleep without Valium,

And having two breasts to put in my brassiere,

And not (yet) needing to get my blood pressure

lowered,

my eyelids raised or a second opinion.

Geeta reading

Continuing in the same vein the poet discovers

And no one we love is in serious trouble or pain,

And our bringing-up-baby days are far behind us,

But our senior-citizen days have not begun,

It’s not what I called happiness

When I was twenty-one,

But it’s turning out to be

What happiness is.

Information about the poet may be found at her wiki page, said Geeta:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Viorst

Judith Viorst, poet & psychoanalytic writer

Judith Viorst (née Stahl, born 1931) is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children's literature. This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.

Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. In 1968, like other writers she protested against the Vietnam War. In the latter part of the 1970s, after two decades of writing for children and adults, she turned to the study of Freudian psychology. In 1981, she became a research graduate at Washington Psychoanalytic Institute after six years of study. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, political writer Milton Viorst. They have three grown sons.

She received the 2011 Foremother Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Research Center for Women & Families. Viorst's book Sad Underwear is a collection of poems that examines a wide variety of feelings and experiences from a child's point of view.

Viorst's books for adults include nonfiction psychology books such as Grown-up Marriage, Imperfect Control, and Necessary Losses. She has written nine books of poetry including Unexpectedly Eighty and Other Adaptations, When Did I Stop Being Twenty and Other Injustices: Selected Poems from Single to Mid-Life and People and other Aggravations. 

She also penned the musical Love & Shrimp with Shelly Markam, which was staged by the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati in the spring of 1999.

12. Thommo

Thommo read a poem titled Father by Edgar Albert Guest. It draws a contrast between Father and Mother.

In matters of finance he can

Tell Congress what to do;

But, O, he finds it hard to meet

His bills as they fall due.

...

He knows the ins and outs of each

And every deep transaction;

We look to him for theories,

But look to ma for action

Thommo reading

The practical mother and the theoretical father are poles apart – you know whom you’d want to have in your corner when a problem looms. This poem may be compared to another by Guest titled Only a Dad. In that poem he depicts a dad with a tired face coming home daily from work, toiling for his brood of children. The last two lines are a tribute:

This is the line that for him I pen,
Only a dad, but the best of men.

The strange thing is that Guest himself had never been a father, said Thommo.

Edgar Albert Guest (20.8.1881 – 5.8.1959) was an American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People’s Poet. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life.

Edgar Albert Guest

He began working at the Detroit Free Press as a copy-boy and then a reporter; his first poem appeared 11 December 1898. He became a naturalised  citizen in 1902. For 40 years, Guest was widely read in N. America.

From his first published work in the Detroit Free Press until his death in 1959, Guest penned some 11,000 poems (that's a rate of a poem a day for ~30 years, said Joe) which were syndicated in 300 newspapers and collected in more than 20 books.

Guest was made Poet Laureate of Michigan, the only poet to have been awarded the title. His popularity led to a weekly Detroit radio show which he hosted from 1931 until 1942, followed by a 1951 NBC television series, A Guest in Your Home. He also had a thrice-weekly transcribed radio program that began January 15, 1941.

When Guest died in 1959, he was buried in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery.


His grand-niece Judith Guest is a successful novelist who wrote the novel, Ordinary People.

13. Kavita


In the Christmas spirit Kavita recited A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore. 

The story goes that on Christmas Eve in 1822, Moore was going to buy a turkey to donate to the poor. As he rode in a sleigh through Greenwich Village’s snow-covered streets in New York city, he began writing a poem for his six children. Some say his image of Santa Claus was inspired by the sleigh’s bearded driver, a local Dutch tradesman. The famous lines of this poem are:

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by

name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and

Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!

Kavita reading

Modern-day observers speculate that many of the poem’s concepts (like the Dutch reindeer names) were lifted from earlier work by Moore’s friend Washington Irving. 

A friend of the Moore sent the poem to the Troy Sentinel newspaper. It was published anonymously in 1823; Moore did not claim credit until 1837. Did he really pen the light-hearted verse? He did not publish it under his name until 1844, wanting to be revered as the author of a scholarly Hebrew dictionary. Instead he became famous for a work he referred to as a ‘trifle.’

A controversy erupted around 1900 when the descendants of Major Henry Livingston Jr., a Dutch Hudson Valley gentleman farmer and poet, claimed that Livingston was the poet. In 1919 the Dutchess County Historical Society ruled that a comparing the poem with Livingston’s verses “adds internal evidence supporting the correctness of the family’s position.” So it wasn't Moore who wrote it, after all. See this reference.

Clement Clarke Moore is credited with devising the modern image of Santa Claus

Anyway, Clement Clarke Moore was born on July 15, 1779, in New York City.  He received a BA from Columbia College in 1798 and an MA in 1801. Moore was the author of Poems (Barlett & Welford, 1844), which included the poem Kavita read A Visit from St. Nicholas. Moore also published several academic works, including A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language (Collins & Perkins, 1809). He taught at the General Theological Seminary in New York City from 1821 to 1850.  He died on July 10, 1863, in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Poems
Consolidated poems for Humour session, Dec 16, 2019