Word: doggerel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...some contests for the Brooklyn Eagle and in old age asked a friend if it was true that "the fellow who pitches the ball aims to pitch it in such a way the batter cannot hit it?" Marianne Moore, the doyenne of 20th century American poets, was reduced to doggerel when she contemplated the old Dodgers: "Ralph Branca has Preacher Roe's number: recall?/ and there's Don Bessent, he can really fire the ball...
...husband but has adjusted to living alone. A frequent companion is an imaginary mutt that she conjures up in glum moments. This shaggy symbol of self-pity recently appeared after a critic dismissed her work with the question, "Do we really need a scholarly study of playground doggerel?" The author of the offending article, L.D. Zimmern, turns out to be the father of Fred's estranged wife. The coincidence seems to have been extended as an ironic gratuity signaling solemn readers that Foreign Affairs is, despite pathos, sudden death and madness, an adroitly bundled comedy of hits and errors...
...like a butterfly, sting like a bee." The young Muhammad Ali dazzled all who saw him perform in the ring, where his dancer's footwork and lightning-fast combinations enabled him to win the world heavyweight championship three times. And out of the ring, his nonstop chatter, his doggerel verse and his insistence that he was "the greatest" won him worldwide affection...
Donald Rumsfeld, with typical self-deprecating humor, likes to tell the story of coming home one evening after Richard Nixon appointed him director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. When he reached into the refrigerator for a beer, there was a note in doggerel from his wife saying, "He tackled a job that couldn't be done ..." At the bottom was the kicker: "... and couldn't do it." If ever there was a job that seemed to defy success, it was the one Rumsfeld accepted last week from President Reagan: that of special envoy to the Middle East...
...Pierre himself (Rick Reynolds), beloved in book form as the kid who never said anything to anybody except "I don't care" and eventually I don't cared himself into getting gobbled up by a lion. This version, by casting a body-suited women (Linda Hammott) as the doggerel in just the right suggestive murmur, manages to transform this grisly little sage into a sex fable--a counterintuitive and ultimately meaningless exercise. Of course it works that way if you want it to: "Then I will out you, don't I care!" "And you will be inside...