"The DaVinci Code of the Woosters"-- parody of the Dan Brown bestseller written in the style of P.G. Wodehouse. Click here to read.

Lipograms

A lipogram is a literary form in which you attempt to write a natural-sounding text without using one letter of the alphabet--usually the most common letter, E. If it sounds impossible, quite a number of novels (!) have been written as lipograms sans E, the most famous being Georges Perec's La Disparition (literally "the disappearance," wittily translated by Gilbert Adair as A Void). A Void contains parodies of a number of famous poems (thus Poe's "The Raven" becomes "Black Bird"). In that spirit, here are three lipogrammatic versions of famous literary works by me:

Stopping By a Woods On A Snowy Night, by Bob Frost

Who owns this woods I think I know
His flat is in that city though.
I stop, and know that man won't spy
Us watching oaks fill up with snow.

My pony Bill thinks I'm awry
To stop without a cabin by.
Twixt sylvan woods and black lagoon
On this, most dark night known to I.

Bill's stirrup-strap concocts a swoon
To ask, what's up, boss? You a loon?
Our only similar sound's a flash
Of tranquil wind amid snowy moon.

This wood is radiant, dark as ash
But I said oaths and am not rash
So far to go until I crash.
So far to go until I crash.

Gattysburg Oration, by Abraham Lincoln

Back in yon day that mighty oaks as tiny saplings stood, our granddads brought forth on this land an infant nation, its birthright autonomy, sworn to that proposition by which all mankind is born to par status.

Now this land is caught up in a grand civil war, judging if such a nation, or any nation with that birthright and vow, can long go on. Today finds us on a grand plain of that war. Today brings us forth to ratify a portion of it as a final burial ground for warriors who fought that this nation might last many a day. Honorably, this ought to occur. But take a grand way of looking at it, our job is not to ratify, our task is not to hold holy, our duty is not to worship this ground. Valiant warriors, living and past, who fought upon this ground honor it far past our poor ability to add or subtract. This world will hardly catch nor long play ball with what I say, but it cannot foul out what our warriors did on this diamond.

It is actually for us now living, to commit our troth to that grand task surviving to us--that from our valiants lost, all of us must draw surpassing passion for that aim from which on this spot all took that last full sip of conviction--that you and I, now, highly insist that our warriors shall not go horizontal in vain, and that this nation will again show autonomy a-borning, and that administration by this population, of this population, and for this population, shall not vanish from our world.

Finlandian Wood, lyrics by John Linnon

I had this old girl
Or should I say
A girl had this boy
I took a flat tour
Isn’t it good?
Finlandian wood
My girl said why not stick around, you can sit if you wish
But this flat was so vacant it had not so much as a dish
I sat on a rug
Biding my night
Growing all tight
Talk, talking till two
This silly old bint
Says catch a hint
I gotta blast off for work six thirty sharp, sorry but this laugh’s on you
I said I don’t gotta and lay down to crash in a loo
And as I got up
I was solitary
This bird’s transitory
So I lit a doob
Isn’t it good?
Finlandian wood.