Junior Words

In the next day or so I'm going to upload to Kindle Direct my most recent collection of light (well ... ultra-light) verse. I'll be charging the lowest amount Kindle allows for such a publication (last time I checked it was $2.99--and worth every cent!).

You don't need a Kindle device to read it--you can download a free app for your phone, tablet, computer, then purchase the "book" on Amazon using your computer. And off you go!

Anyway, here's the Preface to the volume.

A Preface from the Poetaster

 So yet another volume of doggerel has now somehow escaped from its cage and winged its way onto Amazon Direct. Wby?

Try this explanation: Remember “Some Enchanted Evening,” that wonderful song from South Pacific? Emile De Becque, the French planter, sings of love:  “Who can explain it, Who can tell you why? / Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.”

So all I can say is, “I’m going to be wise.” And not try.

Well … maybe I’ll try a little.

Most of these lines I composed (brave word) as part of my most recent doggerel project for my blog Daily Doggerel: turning into verse the 200 vocabulary words I taught in my final year of my career, 2010–11, at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. English III (high school juniors). I selected the words not because they were “hard” or likely to pop up on the SAT, but because they appeared in the literary works we would read throughout the year. Among those texts: Hamlet, The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, and The Great Gatsby. There were numerous others.

I gave the students twenty lists of ten words (20 x 10 = ?) and quizzed them five times per marking period (of which we had four). We reviewed them continually.

And as I converted those words into doggerel, I proceeded in order: I started with List #1, took the first two words, wrote lines about them. Next day I moved on to the next two words in List #1. And so on and so on until—somehow—I had reached the final two words in List #20.

(Do I hear a sigh of relief?) (If so, is it from you? Or me? Or both?)

And in the midst of all this, I got another idea: a series of silly lines about subjects that sound (almost) as if they’d come from Dr. Seuss.  (“Rooster in a Roadster,” “A Sheep in a Jeep,” etc.) Collectively, I called them “Jingles That Jangle,” and I’ve arranged them here into three sections. No real reason for that organization. Just did it.

There’s also a section called “Desultory Doggerel,” lines that I wrote about ordinary, quotidian things and posted on Facebook to the delight (or, more likely, dismay) of my FB Friends. These lines deal with, oh, a trip to the dermatologist, some squirrels I saw, a cloudy day. I’m sure you can see the compelling, enduring interest of such things?

The final section boasts for a title a word I invented a few years ago: Wolferel. What does it mean? Well, if doggerel is a word we use for inferior lines—silly, inconsequential ones—I decided a few years ago that we need a word in English for lines that are more serious than doggerel but not quite accomplished enough to earn the name poetry. Wolferel seemed, well, perfect.

Here’s one way to look at it: Let’s say you applied to three colleges/universities. One is stellar (Poetry U.), one a little less so (Wolferel U.), the third even less so (Doggerel U.). Not a bad analogy?

I think I’ll have a sweatshirt made. So when people in the coffee shop notice it and ask me about Wolferel University, I can lie, tell them I graduated summa cum laude!

(Just as I did in 1966 from Hiram College—now that is a patent lie!).

So we’ve arrived at the end of this Preface. I’m sure you feel enlightened. I know I do.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy your journey through these pages. I hope you smile now and then; I’m confident that as you read through the Wolferel you will mutter, “Not quite a poem. But definitely not a doggerel.”

Daniel Dyer

February 11, 2020