December 08, 2005

I will alarm islamic owls

My coworker Francis wrote a book called the Holy Tango of Literature. In it, he made anagrams of the names of famous poets, and then wrote poems based on the anagrams in the poet's style. The book includes Emily Dickenson’s "Skinny Domicile", Alfred Lord Tennyson’s "Errol Flynn’s not Dead", and William Shakespeare’s "Is Sperm Like a Whale?"

Here’s William Carlos Williams

I WILL ALARM ISLAMIC OWLS

I will be alarming
the Islamic owls
that are in
the barn

and which
you warned me
are very jittery
and susceptible to loud noises

Forgive me
they see so well in the dark
so feathery
and so dedicated to Allah.

Which is several grades of awesome.

Francis just released it under a creative commons license in a gigantic text file, and it’s available in bookstores. In addition to being an anagram master Francis is also a crosswords puzzle editor, a knitter, a musician, and, I suspect, some kind of ninja.

Posted by Alex at 12:01 AM