I found this offbeat softcover collection at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store, and couldn't resist. It contains quite a variety of offbeat poems, some from expected sources - Lear and Carroll, for example, who probably account for a third of the book between them - and some from sources that surprised me (C. S. Lewis? Christopher Isherwood?).

There were some foreign-language entries here (not counting the ones consisting of nonsense words or made-up languages), and even when those were footnoted I admit I couldn't follow them very well. And the entries that were purely nonsense didn't appeal to me very much; I preferred the puns and the satires, the nursery rhymes, limericks, and parodies. And there were plenty of those!

Among my favorites: a poem titled "Ipecacuanha," and using it in a rhyme (with "Juliana", in case you were wondering). Not a word I'd expect to find in rhyme. And there was a little nursery-rhyme called "Eaper Weaper" that was a somewhat grimmer version of "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater"; while Peter managed to keep his wife very well once he worked out the pumpkin-shell housing issues, Eaper Weaper (chimbley-sweeper) shoved his up the chimney. [I wish Edward Gorey had illustrated some of the items in this book, including that one; sounds like something he'd enjoy.]

"The Carelesse Nurse Mayd," by Thomse Hood, was another Gorey-esque poem; here, a nursemaid is seduced by her lover and neglects her charge, who promptly drowns. The tag-line: "O! foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde/The Momente that her Care was drownd!" [A. E. Housman's "On the Death of a Female Officer of the Salvation Army" is yet another that could have used the Gorey treatment.]

I found a clever little limerick by Mark Twain:

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared he would tho
Man that he saw
Dumping dirt near his store.
The drivers, therefore, didn't do.

(Took me a minute to figure it out, I confess.)

And there's lots more. "The Dying Airman," which I recall my father singing to me ("...take the cam-shaft from out of my backbone, and assemble the engine again."); T. S. Eliot's "Jellicle Cats"; the entire text of "The Hunting of the Snark". Very entertaining.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I plan to take several books to the mini-meet for mojosmom at Tealuxe on Newbury Street at 6. They'll be up for grabs to whoever attends the meeting - or anyone who stops by the table to ask about 'em! - and if any of them wind up unclaimed, I'll either leave them somewhere inside or in front of Tealuxe, or will drop them off at one of the OBCZs in town.

Hope the finder enjoys the book!

Caught at Aug. 2009 Supp. Meetup with Bookcrossers from Chicago and NH. In the to be read pile.
: )

This was a very sweet book.
There were a lot of submissions from Lewis Carol, as well as TS Elliot and some well known others.
Also the complete version of Peter Piper! Very cool.
To be released at the next Boston Meetup for Bookcrossing/weekend mtg.

Caught at the November 2009 Saturday Bookcrossing Meetup. Thank you!