From today’s WaPo (registration)
When I [Gene Weingargen] heard that the new poet laureate of the United States was to be Donald Hall, the New Hampshire literary eminence, I was elated. The media accounts rightfully praised the beauty and sophistication of Hall’s verse. But that’s not why I was happy. I was happy because I knew something most in the media didn’t.
The respectable Donald Hall at times has been a joyful practitioner of some of the lowest, least dignified, raunchiest forms of poetry. In short, he’s my kind of guy! He’s done limericks, and he is a fan of the infinitely silly but challenging “Higgledy piggledies,” also known as double dactyls.
So Weingarten faxes him his own double-dactyl tribute:
Higgledy piggledy
Donald Hall, Laureate!
News of it rains in an
Imperfect storm,
Tragicomedically
Failing to mention his
Seminal work in this
Sorry-ass form.
hmmmm
I liked the little comic pictures of the poet laureate and the poet vulgaris.