And lo, I weep

[yendi]

Excerpt from the channel /games in Kingdom of Loathing:

Another player: Trivia! In Stark Raving Dad, a man who claims to be Michael Jackson stays with the Simpson family. Where is "Michael" actually from?

Me (private): Paterson, NJ

Another player: Yendi wins with Patterson, NJ.

Me: Yay! Bonus trivia -- what great American poet is associated with that same town?

Answers I received included: Bruce Springsteen, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Alan Poe.

I had to give some serious hints before anyone got it (I basically referenced everything but the plums in the fucking icebox).

Sigh.

(Did I mention that I was in class at 8AM three days a week for a college course on Frost and Williams during my sophomore year?)

(Also, Ginsberg at least mentions Paterson in Howl, so it wasn't an awful guess. But the others just felt like guesses. And I'm still not sure if the Springsteen guess was serious or not. He is a poet from New Jersey, though.)

Comments

[bonnie-rocks.livejournal.com]

::Headdesk::

Also, I didn't know KOL was still up and running. I used to play 7 years ago.

~*::Meow::*~

[audacian.livejournal.com]

So...

...

...

what's the answer? *g*

ETA: Google suggests that the Allen Ginsberg answer is correct, so nyah.

[yendi]

Ginsberg grew up there, but William Carlos Williams is the poet who wrote the five-book cycle about the city. And as I teach in my reference courses, Google is at best a starting point for research. :-)

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Beside the white chickens! Ah ha. Wasn't familiar with the plums in the icebox poem.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Googling got me Williams Carlos Williams, which I see from other comments is right, but uh, I suspect few people outside the US have heard of him. Ginsberg would have been my guess; better known and definitely associated with New Jersey.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Some people inside the US haven't heard of him....

This Is Just to Say

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

I have given
the wrong answers
that were in
the Google

and which
you were probably
saving
for a later snarky LJ post

Forgive me
they were incorrect
so wrong
and so not right

[yendi]

It was definitely a US-centric question (and all guesses came from folks in the US, although there are certainly plenty of KOL folks from other nations).

[yendi]

Sigh. That's a shame.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I like the plums poem better. You can have a lot more fun with it (who is the speaker talking to, what's his tone, etc.) The red wheelbarrow one is more like a photograph with words, capturing a moment in detail.

Re: This Is Just to Say

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Icon is incorrect. YOU win. Everything ever.

[davidlubar.livejournal.com]

I spoke at some schools in Paterson. I'm happy to report that the librarians there would have aced your quiz. While we're on the sub-topic of poets with symmetrical (or somewhat symmetrical) names, might I suggest you avoid frustration by never asking that particular group any trivia about Ford Madox Ford.