Now the news has arrived
From the Valley of Vail
That a Chippendale Mupp has just bitten his tail
Which he does every night before shutting his eyes
Such nipping sounds silly. But, really, it’s wise.
He has no alarm clock. So this is the way
He makes sure that he’ll wake at the right time of day.
His tail is so long, he won’t feel any pain
‘Til the nip makes the trip and gets up to his brain.
In exactly eight hours, the Chippendale Mupp
Will, at last, feel the bite and yell “Ouch!” and wake up.
-Dr. Seuss
Theodore Seuss Geisel was a master of anapestic meter.
An anapest is a metrical foot used in poetry which comprises two short syllables, followed by a long one. More familiarly (particularly in the world created by Seuss), it consisted of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one:
“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…”
Or, in keeping with this week’s theme:
“The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.”
Simple, but at the same time extremely difficult to pull off effectively.
Geisel was an English major at Dartmouth who eventually became the editor-in-chief of the college humor magazine, the Dartmouth Jack O’ Lantern; but after being forced by the dean to resign his post after being caught drinking gin in his dorm room, he rather cunningly adopted the nom de plume “Seuss” in order to continue to be able to write for the magazine.
Apparently, nobody at the Ivy League college figured out the identity of the mysterious “Seuss.”
When banned from his post for a gin-drinking crime
The scribe picked a name and then bided his time.
In a different guise he remained on the loose
By pretending to be the mysterious “Seuss.”
Geisel graduated from Dartmouth and left the USA to pursue a PhD in English literature at Lincoln College, Oxford; but, whilst there, he met a lady named Helen Palmer who persuaded him that he should give up his dream of becoming an English teacher and pursue a career as a cartoonist.
