On July 16th, 1834 Jones Very found a shell and
Pressing it to his ear, heard a voice say
"Do not, whatever you do, marry Ted Hughes!
Pass this message faithfully on to other poets and you
Will appear --in brief excerpts -- centuries from now
In anthologies of Early American Literature.
Do not break the chain! Brasseya Allen did
And nothing much happened to her. Ever."
So Very left a note to William Cullen Bryant
Who gave it to Edgar Allan Poe who
Lost the note but mentioned it to
James Russell Lowell (despite Lowell writing
That Poe's poems were two-fifths sheer fudge)
Who left word to Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, and
Cosmo Perlow Baker (who never wrote anything
But meant to). Ezra Pound overheard it in his cradle and told
Amy Lowell who -- sniffily -- told Elinor Wylie and
Edna St. Vincent Millay who both meant
To repeat it but somehow never did so that
What happened to Sylvia Plath is Simply Not Her Fault.
