My latest collection of doggerel (and wolferel) is currently uploading to Kindle Direct and will be available for purchase (2.99--the lowest allowable price!) later today (I'll post on FB when it's in the Kindle Store.) If you have a Kindle device, you can download it; if not, the Kindle app is free and you can use it on any smart phone or tablet.
Foreword
And here we go again!
Once again, I invite you on a
journey, this time through 101 books that I’ve loved throughout my life. And I
mean throughout my life. Accordingly,
you will find here some verses about Dr. Seuss, some about Shakespeare, some about
The Story of Ferdinand, some about In Search of Lost Time. Books from
boyhood, adolescence, adulthood, dotage—they’re all here. Mixed together like a
very inclusive gumbo.
Well, not all books I’ve loved are here, of course. I now read more than 100
books a year, so winnowing this down to 101 total
was a bit of a challenge for me. Also a challenge: I wasn’t keeping a list. I
just thought of one every day and wrote a quick little piece of doggerel about
it. Waited for the next day.
So there was an expected
consequence—or, at least, a consequence I should
have expected. And maybe I should say consequenceS.
• I left out many writers whose works I’ve long loved. Ben Jonson, Henry Roth,
Jonathan Franzen. (I’m blushing already. Don’t make me go on.)
• As the days and weeks (and months!) went on, I also lost track of
which books I’d already written about, so—guess what!—I discovered as I was
editing these texts that I written two
pieces on Brian Hall’s Fall of Frost.
I’ve put them now on the same page and have had to write another one—about
Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone—to
complete the 101 that the title promises. It’s not good to have a title that’s
a lie, you know? Does damage to your credibility, right from the get-go.
All of these lines first appeared
in my blog (dawnreader@blogspot), and I then linked them to Facebook, where my
FB Friends enjoyed scrolling by them with very practiced speed. I have done
some light editing—but I’ve not excluded any.
Oh, and you’ll notice there’s a gap
in the dates at one point. Health issues.
I’ve also included—as has been my
wont in these doggerel publications—two other sections of verse: Desultory
Doggerel and Wolferel.
The former are silly poems I wrote
quickly and posted on Facebook—poems about animals I saw on the road, dumb
things I thought of, memories, fantasies. Pretty much, well, fluff.
In the latter section, Wolferel (a
word I’ve proudly coined, by the way—I’m waiting for you, OED!), are lines that are (I hope) beyond Doggerel but (I fear) not
quite Poetry. They lie in the demilitarized zone, in the twilight zone (is it
night? or day?), in Purgatory … I’m getting excessive. Anyway, they are lines I
worked on a bit, lines that (at the time I posted them) I was a bit proud of.
As I look at them now, I’m a little less confident. Oh well. I should have
learned by now: never look over
something you’ve already published! How quickly can pride segue into shame …
Anyway, I hope you enjoy yet
another voyage on the good ship Doggerel.
I have fun every day, thinking about and writing these. May you enjoy a fraction
of that pleasure!
—Daniel Dyer, April 3, 2018 (the
ninth birthday of our grandson Carson!)
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