A dam crew in action.
My friend James Andrew McComb, alerted me to the fun to be had in creating poem titles from anagrams of people's names. In particular, anagrams of three names give a wide range of choices of possible poem titles of about the right length. Once you've got a suitable title you just need to write the poem to go with it!
This idea can be found expanded upon in The Modern Humourist with various examples by Francis Heaney of what various famous poets might have come up with, had they followed this scheme with their own names.
I was so tickled by I Will Alarm Islamic Owls that I straight away reeled off 3 poems based on 3 anagrams of the name of the man that alerted me to the idea. This poem is one of them.
Note that this class of poetry is NOT strictly anagrammatic, as that requires EACH LINE to be a anagram of the original phrase. Such a highly constrained format is obviously difficult to deal with and hard to bend to your will. A brilliant example of what can be done however is David Shulman's 1936 sonnet: Washington Crossing the Delaware
Brilliant! Especially when you consider it was done before computers!
Bereft, I stand and watch,
in helpless rage,
as men scam the dam crew job.
Is it fate,
that draws me here?
Here to stand,
feckless,
against the swelling tide of Corruption.
Aye! Fate it is,
that grants me a seat,
front and centre,
to watch,
as men scam the dam crew job.
Warren Mars - May 2012