Oh the Grinch, he went on a mad spree
Reduced Christmas to piles of debris
But in Whoville, they say
That on that fateful day
His heart grew not just one size, but three

Event: Birth of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss
Year: 1904
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss

I normally like to start off these entries by mentioning my inspiration, describing the spark that led me to seek to improve each particular piece.  In this case, however, I will have to refrain.  There must have been some sort of catalyst, something that spurred me to this course of action, but I cannot for the life of me remember what.  So I’ll just say that we’re talking about Longfellow and leave it at that.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Wow.  It takes an awful lot of characters just to get out this guy’s name.  I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.  But let’s go ahead and take a look anyway.  Here is perhaps his most famous poem, Paul Revere’s Ride:

“Listen my children and you shall hear:
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now”

Hardly a man is now awake sounds just about right to me.

Clearly, Longfellow has a thing or two to learn here.  First off, it’s generally not a good idea to start by calling your audience children.  A lot of people take offense at that.  Unless the ones he’s talking to really are his children, in which case I don’t think his poem is going to have a very broad appeal.  Call me a skeptic, but it seems unlikely that Longfellow got around like Genghis Khan got around, if you know what I mean (and no, I don’t mean “on a horse.”)

Then we’ve got this date.  Never spell out dates.  It’s such a blatant waste of characters.  But, worse than that, he doesn’t even finish it.  I mean, come on, Longfellow, how are you supposed to teach us kids about Paul Revere if we don’t even know which century he lived in?  Guess we have to do a little detective work on this one.

Hmm . . . Jimmy Hoffa, the Edmund Fitzgerald, Saturday Night Live, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Thrilla in Manila . . . and Paul Revere?  Nope, it’s not 1975.

Carmen, indoor ice hockey, first person swims the English Channel . . . and Paul Revere?  Not 1875 either.

Second Centaurian Invasion, polar ice caps refreeze . . . and Paul Revere?  He’s not talking about 2075.

Second Continental Congress, “Give me Liberty or give me Death,” Bunker/Breed’s Hill . . . okay, now I think we’re got it.  1775.  Whew.  Took long enough.

Anyway, now that we’ve got that sorted out, we can get down to writing a version that’s short enough for everyone to enjoy:

“4/18/1775: Revere rides.  12:00- Medford.  1:00- Lexington.  2:00- Concord.  He told the villages and farms the Regulars were coming.”

There.  Now you know exactly when everything happened.  And isn’t that what’s really important?

“Hey! What are you doing?”
Called a voice atop the stair
“Dat room’s not ‘til later
First da Don’s gotta . . . prepare”

Tifa whispered frantically
“Okay, so here’s the plan:
For tonight they’ve brought three girls
Well . . . two girls and one man

“The Don comes out and picks one
Who then shares his bed tonight
But, instead of foreplay
You interrogate him. Right?”

Aeris said, “This sounds like fun!
Oh boy, will he be tricked!”
“Sure,” said Cloud, assuming
That he’d not be the one picked

The two girls pranced up the stairs
With “Ooohs!” and “Ohmygawds!”
The guard said, “Why I gotta deal
Wit’ all o’ dese dumb broads?”

In his office, Corneo
A fat man in maroon
“I say! Look at these lovely girls!
I think that I may swoon!

“My, you’ve got a pretty face!
And this one’s so cute, too!
I’ve never had a choice this hard
But I will go with . . . you!”

This week’s puzzle:

A former employee of an insurance firm gets into trouble because he can’t let go of his old job. A trip to the tropics improves his mood but leaves him with some big problems to deal with when he gets home.

Last week’s puzzle:

A rich man about to be married is distressed when he learns about another wedding, and he is even more upset when a divorced man comes to his engagement party. Two days later he sees his fiancée with another man, so he rounds up eight women he’s never met before and takes them out of the country with him.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Émile Zola stood up for the Jews
And the government he did accuse
But they did not approve
Said to prison he’d move
So to England he took a short cruise

Event: Émile Zola convicted of libel after publishing “J’accuse” in defense of Alfred Dreyfus
Year: 1898
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

Sport is in the air.  In college basketball, teams on the bubble are looking for one last hot run that might get them into the Big Dance.  In baseball, pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training.  In the NHL . . . well, something must be going on.  And in Vancouver, in between uplifting and inspiring us, the greatest athletes in the world are reminding us of one of the greatest truths in sport: even heroes sometimes fall (in the case of the Winter Olympics, often literally).

In the realm of fiction, nowhere is this truth better exemplified than in Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat.”  Long-term readers (and, as far as I know, I have nothing but) may recall from last summer that I am a particular fan of this work, and I thought it would be worth taking a look at it from another angle.  Non-fans of baseball often complain that the game is too long.  Wondering if these people might have the same problem with a poem about baseball, I decided to look into shortening it.

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

“The Outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Co”

Now, we’ve seen this before: the author gets in a good introduction, but he wastes so many characters that he has no time left to get to the meat of the story.  Casey isn’t even mentioned for another stanza, and this hero doesn’t actually appear until about a thousand characters in.  Thayer gets to mention the Mudville nine, but the only specifics we get about them are the first two letters of a name (at least, we assume it’s a name because of the capital “C,” though his capitalization of “Outlook” makes such an assumption risky at best).

Authors could solve much of this “setting dilemma” by taking care of business with the title and then moving on.  In this case, once we’ve seen “Casey at the Bat,” we’re already pretty sure it’s about baseball, discounting the off chance that it’s a story about Casey and a buddy of his from the order Chiroptera.  But we can go further.  If the title was something like “Casey’s Bat: Hot or Not?” or “Casey: Hit or Die,” then we could easily skip the first 5-7 stanzas, avoiding wasting time with peripheral characters like “Cooney” and “Barrows,” who clearly aren’t as important as Casey himself.

This leaves us free to cover all the essential facts in a few quick, painless fragments (this is poetry, remember, so we’re not too worried about grammar):

“9th inning, two out.  Mudville down by 2, two men on base.  Casey takes strike one, strike two, strike three.  Game over.  Mudville joyless.”

Now that you’ve gotten the story of Casey out of the way, you have plenty of time to move on to reading the scouting report on the vastly underrated Jimmy Blake.

Down the steps, a creepy room
With a . . . torture device?
Looking ‘round for clues and such
Was one girl, dressed real nice

“Are you Tifa?” Aeris asked
Without even a “Yo”
She introduced herself: “Aeris
And this is my friend . . . Jo”

“Yes, I’m Tifa,” she replied
In a suspicious tone
“But what are you two doing here?
I thought I’d be alone”

“We might ask the same of you!”
Said “Jo” in a falsetto
He brought it on with a sharp kick
From his high-heel stiletto

Tifa laughed. “Cloud, drop the act
It’s real clear who you are
Dresses, makeup, even wigs
Can only go so far”

She said, “I’m here for Corneo”
As Cloud stood there in shock
“It seems he knows of Shinra’s plans
I came to make him talk

“And Cloud, I’ve something here for you”
It was a swift elbow
“What . . . was that for?” grunted Cloud
“For making me fret so”

This week’s puzzle:

A rich man about to be married is distressed when he learns about another wedding, and he is even more upset when a divorced man comes to his engagement party. Two days later he sees his fiancée with another man, so he rounds up eight women he’s never met before and takes them out of the country with him.

Last week’s puzzle:

Two entertainers go on a journey and find themselves under attack by people who want to kill them to prevent them from talking. When a group of their fans go to see them at a show, the situation rapidly gets out of hand, but one person’s sacrifice allows them to get away alive.

And the answer is . . . ▼

What goes on beyond the mortal plane?
Do we any existence maintain?
Young King Tut, though well-dressed
I am sure never guessed
Of the fame that his mummy would gain

Event: Howard Carter unseals the inner chamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb
Year: 1923
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KV62

As Valentine’s Day was this weekend, I thought it only made sense to talk about expressions of love.  There are many ways to say, “I love you,” some long, some short, some famous, and some obscure.  Let’s take a look at “famous,” starting with this well-known poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For”

It’s not a bad start, really.  She loves as deeply as her soul can.  That’s pretty good.  But when you count it, as she herself suggests, that’s only one way, three tops, if you count “depth,” “breadth,” and height separately.  When you look at it that way, it’s not very impressive at all.

Let’s try another one, the famous Sonnet 18 by my good friend and frequent participant in Brevity=Wit, William Shakespeare:

“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lea”

This one’s just a mess.  You kind of understand where he’s going.  He does call her (or, depending on what interpretation you subscribe to, him) “lovely,” but that’s about it.  “Temperate?”  I really can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a compliment or not.  Clearly what happened here is that old Willy tried to profess his love, but in the end he panicked and just babbled on about the first thing that came into his head, which happened to be the weather.

Now, I’m not going to suggest any of my own compositions to be used instead.  And I suppose that even these long-winded sonnets could work for some people, if high school English class is their idea of romance.  But, for those of you that are looking for more bang for your buck (or, specifically, more content for your characters), then I would like to recommend this classic work of unknown authorship:

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you.”

There you have it.  Everything you need, in only sixty-one characters.  A fabulous exemplar of brevity.

But it’s not the best.  Even this terse, to-the-point poem spends half the time going on about flowers, which don’t really have anything to do with anything.  If you want the ultimate declaration of love (as measured by quantity of love expressed per character), then I direct your attention to The Empire Strikes Back:

LEIA: “I love you.”

HAN: “I know.”

Eighteen characters.  Beautiful.  It doesn’t get any sweeter than that.

Happy Valentine’s Day!