[Susan McLean]

Like many occasional poems (and I assume this was one), this poem showers a lot of brio, style, and wit on something that may not seem very consequential to someone who doesn't know the person and occasion. It strikes me as being very clever and adept, but not especially funny, except in terms of the distance between the high style of the poem and the low subject matter. The allusions to individuals probably amused the gastroenterologist in question, but are not likely to ring bells with the general public. The public needn't recognize the names to get the general point of the verses, but they may feel shut out of a private joke, to some extent.

Susan

[Martin Elster]

I believe Shatzki is misspelled. I think it should be Schatzki.

[R. S. Gwynn]

The poet has identified this as an hommage to Longfellow. Was it "Excelsior"? One of the all-time good bad poems.

As far as "innards" are concerned, two Brits have opened a restaurant in Houston that I must get to soon:

http://events.nytimes.com/2009/04/08...tml?ref=dining

Offal must be the next dining new frontier.

[Susan McLean]

The French have been doing it for years. I dined in a restaurant in Paris at least a decade ago in which all of the specials contained offal of some sort. Of course, the French can make anything taste good. But I have to say that I have been to other restaurants there that I have enjoyed more.

Susan

[John Whitworth]

Well of course it was Excelsior. How could I have forgotten. Do you all know the illustrtaed Excelsior by James Thurber? He did a number of good bad poems. Surely the BEST good bad poem is Newbolt's 'There's a breathless hush in the close tonight'. It's actually cfalled something classical. And perhaps it's just good-good.

Perhaps innards are a Brit thing. Just after the war, when I was a little boy, tripe and onions was consumed pretty generally (meat was on the ration) and steak-and-kidney pie for dinner and liver and bacon for breakfast are again very traditional fare, not posh restaurant at all. Having said that, alas, sweetbreads are pretty well impossible to get since various health scares concerned with beef.

Chicken liver, ah there's something well worth consuming. Of course it isn't us, but those cheese-eating surrender monkeys who are foremost in the preparing and consumption of parts of a beast you wouldn't believe. In Caen, in Normandy, the supermarkets vie with one another in producing huge tins of tripe a la Caen, or whatever is the exact nomenclature. Bloody good tins too and (as in generally the case with innards, very cheap.

And my cat, beside me as I write, would like you to know that liver is the stuff to give the troops, ah yes.

And the Scots would likwe to know if haggis counts.

Sam, tell us about your Texan restaurant. Texas, the stomach of the USA!

There isn't anything to be done in the eating line with fish guts is there?
Seagulls like 'em!

My wife tells me I've got to lose weight. What for? I enquire.

[Henry Quince]

Offal must be the next dining new frontier.

And this is an offal pun.

A good one on the subject of innards was perpetrated by James MacAuley (half of "Ern Malley") when he was told that half his large bowel must be removed or he would soon be dead: "Better a semi-colon than a full stop."

[Janet Kenny]

Fegato alla Veneziana is food for the gods.

[Ann Drysdale]

Oh, Offal and Longfellow and terrible puns! This is how a competition of this sort should end - not with a grunt but a gizzard.

A E Housman's take on "Excelsior!" began:

The shades of night were falling fast, the rain was falling faster,
When through an alpine village passed an alpine village pastor...

What larks! Thanks again, everyone.