To be read in a key that bridges the major and minor temperaments
Hello there, good day to you,
Good day from Broadway Baby too.
Today’s review will fit the style
Of nonsense that we saw compiled.
The ‘celebration’, as it was named,
Was more a lecture I have claimed
Though lectures can still be, I say,
A celebration in their way.
The speaker was a girl called Clare,
A pregnant girl with straw-blonde hair,
And blonde-haired Clare spoke to us there
About the nonsense poem fare.
Nonsense, she said, despite its name,
Has sense beneath its nonsense game,
For nonsense without sense, you see,
Is gibberish for even me.
(Gibberish is sound alone,
Without the sense beneath its tone,
And sense allows communication,
Without which comes exasperation).
Clare spoke as well about the lives
Of men whose nonsense work survives -
Of Lewis Carroll most of all
(Whose little Alice you will recall).
Clare’s fellow host was Murray Long,
Who - in his look - did most belong
To this quasi-Victorian time
Of gin and quills and nonsense rhyme.
Murray Long had floppy hair,
And read the poems of yesteryear
With a voice most entertaining
(And a moustache most pertaining).
Sadly, though, he chose to read
His poems off an Apple screen
And frankly this got in the way
Of him and us this yesterday.
Furthermore, the talk was short -
Too short I feel I must report;
The Q&A which filled the hour
Did little to extend its power.
But even if you wanted to
You couldn’t see a talk part two
For talk part one was to be sold
The only part and thus the whole.
