Unadulterated Genius

(By which we mean no adults involved)

Whoa. Nothing rhymes with "poetry"!

This startling observation occurred to me 22 seconds ago, after my editor, Tom the Butcher, informed me that the column I had just submitted to him, a witty account of my recent problems with a professional moving company, was "not remotely funny." When I asked why, Tom said, "Because it does not contain any funny ideas or funny anecdotes or funny words." When I protested that he can't just outright kill a column right on deadline, Tom said, "Well, you're supposed to be such a [dirty adjective] creative genius, why don't you prove it by writing a brand-new column in 10 minutes?"

Before Tom could think more carefully about the wisdom of this, I hung up. He is calling back now, and I am not answering the phone. The way I see it, I have an official assignment from my boss.

Wait, "poetry" sort of rhymes with "grow a tree"! And when you think about it, this adroitly continues the tree-poetry nexus so nauseatingly explored by whatsizname, in that dreadful, singsong, get-out-the-metronome poem we all had to memorize in fourth grade and then recite stiffly in front of the class while Clayton Landy made fun of our Howdy Doody haircut, which is why we all hate poetry. I think the poet intended this. I think he was bitter because, as I seem to recall, he had a girl's first name.

You know what is a lousy girl's first name? "Precious." In the last decade, this name has been given to more baby girls than has "Ann," a fact I discovered after 35 precious seconds of Internet research. I can just see thousands of American moron parents looking at their darling little newborn and thinking, "Oh, how precious -- hey, that gives me an idea ..." Well, here's a better idea: If you're so into immediate impressions, you might as well name your newborn "Wrinkles" or "Waaaaaaaah."

I just remembered. His name was Joyce! Joyce Kilmer. And I see from Wikipedia that he died heroically in combat in France in World War I. A note in German was left by his body that said, "With luck, the world shall never see/A poet crappier than thee." (Okay, I made that last part up.)

You're probably wondering how the poem next to the body would conveniently rhyme in both German and Elizabethan English. I haven't given it much thought yet. I'll get back to you on that in a paragraph or two.

Hey, you know the paragraph mark, the thing that looks like a backward P with two vertical lines? The official term for it is a "pilcrow," which is a funny name for a punctuation mark, but not the funniest. The funniest name for a punctuation mark probably belongs to the combination of question mark and exclamation point that is called the "interrobang," which sounds like the grilling a woman puts a guy through in a bar before deciding whether to sleep with him. Also, there is a punctuation mark, used for emphasis, called the "asterism," which sounds like it should be a medical term for a hemorrhoid.

Okay, it just so happens that by coincidence Güstav Mückenfüss, the German soldier I made up who left the note, had attended the Sorbonne, where he had been a scholar of Elizabethan English, and he wrote the poem using easily transliterable cognates. He later choked to death while eating poorly prepared bratwurst.

My son just walked in and asked me what "guff" is, as in the thing one is not supposed to give another person any of. I told him it was an old-fashioned term for carbonated phlegm, which turn-of-the-century British schoolboys used to substitute for soda, as a prank. I think my son bought this.

Nine minutes 25 seconds.

Tom's calling back. I'll take it now.

Gene Weingarten can be reached at weingarten@washpost.com. Chat with him online Tuesdays at noon.