PODCAST · arts

Circus, The by Edwin Carty Ranck (1879 - 1957)

by LibriVox

LibriVox volunteers bring you 19 recordings of The Circus by Edwin C Ranck.This was the Weekly Poetry project for June 14, 2020. ------This little volume was written for no reason on earth and with no earthly reason. It just simply happened, on the principle, I suppose that "murder will out." Murder is a bad thing and so are nonsense rhymes. There is often a valid excuse for murder; there is none for nonsense rhymes. They seem to be a necessary evil to be classed with smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases. They are also on the order of the boomerang and eventually rebound and inflict much suffering on the unlucky verse-slinger. So you see nonsense, like a little learning is a dangerous thing and should be handled with as much care as the shotgun which is never known to be loaded. From the Preface to Poems for Pale People, A Volume of Verse By Edwin C. Ranck.