Sunday, March 4, 2012

Like many other posts of mine, this one doesn’t make any sense either.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


The lines above constitute the entirety of a poem entitled “The Red Wheelbarrow” by the American poet William Carlos Williams, who died on this date in 1963.

Speaking of poetry, last Friday was the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) and I missed the celebration completely. You know Dr. Seuss. He wrote Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and Horton Hatches the Egg and Horton Hears a Who! and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and Yertle the Turtle and If I Ran the Circus and lots of others. What you probably don’t know is how to pronounce his name.

It doesn’t rhyme with Mother Goose.

Wikipedia states that he himself noted that it rhymed with “voice” and a friend of his, Alexander Liang, wrote this:

You’re wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn’t rejoice
If you’re calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice).

And speaking of March 4th, American presidential inaugurations from 1789 through 1933 occurred on March 4th. Since then, thanks to passage of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the inaugurations have been held on January 20th.

As proof, here is a January 20th scene in Washington, D.C., not too many years ago:


Rather than working yourself into a tizzy over the American political scene in the 21st century, however, just remember:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


5 comments:

  1. If only Dr Seuss had been around to write a blog entitled 'Rhymes with Choice'.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, good Sir Robert de Brague, you are full of facts today! Wonder why they switched inauguration day from March 4th to Jan 20th - as I know that January in DC can be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!

    Was William Carlos Williams about six years old when he wrote that poem? It's rubbish! Mine is much better:-

    so much relies
    upon

    a blue rainwater
    butt

    hidden by leafy
    bushes

    beside the double
    garage.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shooting Parrots stole my comment ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Shooting Parrots and Carolina, great minds run in the same channel, they say. (But then, as someone once reminded me, so do garbage scows.)

    Yorkshire Pudding, I believe that, transportation having improved over the years, the powers that be/were decided that four months between election and inauguration were simply too many. So they changed it to two. Still a bit long by modern transportation and communication standards.

    Had William Carlos Williams lived another six months, he would have celebrated his 80th birthday. He wrote "The Red Wheelbarrow" in 1923, when he was 40 -- exactly halfway through his life. At the peak of his powers, so to speak. I like his poem better than yours because yours doesn't mention white chickens.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am looking forward to reading your thoughts about Willard Romney - very likely the next President of the USA. Is he really up to the job?

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...