XCVII

Don January 23rd, 2010

XCVII

 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

            I wonder if I was getting any work done on my dissertation while teaching my classes and writing my poems?  Let’s see what the evidence says:

 

Limerick # 3

 

There was once a great student of lore

Who would sit still and study for more

                         Than a day at a grind.

                         He went out of his mind

And collapsed on the library floor.

 

Limerick # 4

 

While writing a long dissertation,

A man made a sound observation:

                         “Once I have the degree,

                        All this rubbish, with glee,

I will burn in a great conflagration.”

 

In fact, I did not follow through on his incendiary threat, as you can see by going to the UGA library and looking up the dissertation (or ordering it from Dissertation Abstracts International—now there’s an idea!).  Donald T. Williams, The Depth of Rightful Doom: The Influence of the English Reformers on Book V of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Diss. Georgia 1985.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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