1935 poem with one word per line / SUN 5-10-15 / Comic impressionist David / Mad magazine cartoonist Drucker / Branded footwear / Counterpart of Aurora / Internet troll intentionally / She's courted in courtship of Miles Standish / 1990 Mike Leigh comedy drama / Mountain to mountain transport / Sch with Manchester campus / Walk with swaying hips

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging


THEME:"Literary Circles" — "THE LOCUST TREE IN FLOWER" (3D: 1935 poem with one word per line … as spelled out by this puzzle's circled letters) a poem by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (15D: Writer of 3-Down), is spelled out, in its entirety, in circles in the grid:

Theme answers:

• CUCAMONGA
• OFTEN
• GREENING
• MASTIFF
• RESOLD
• ALBRIGHT
• BROKEN RIB
• BRANCH OFF
• BECOME
• EGG WHITE
• "LIFE IS SWEET"
• MAY I SEE
• OVER AGAIN

Word of the Day: GLIA (33D: Cells that protect neurons) —

noun

ANATOMY

1. the connective tissue of the nervous system, consisting of several different types of cell associated with neurons. (google)

This made me kind of hate poetry, which is weird, as I've been getting really into poetry of late. Like, I'm currently reading "Lives of the Modern Poets" by William H. Pritchard (haven't made it to the WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS chapter yet, though), and I just started "How to Be Drawn," the new book of poems by Terrance Hayes (which arrived in my mailbox two days ago). Earlier this year, I devoured "Citizen" by Pomona College professor Claudia Rankine (worth it for the Serena Williams poem/essay alone), as well as "Why Brownlee Left" by Paul Muldoon and "Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson. I am teaching 17C poetry right now (final exam on Tuesday). So, I thought I liked poetry. And I think I still do. But this puzzle, man …  OK, first: this poem is not famous enough to carry a Sunday puzzle. Sorry, WCW aficionados, it's just not. WCW's wikipedia page doesn't even mention this poem. When you google "William Carlos Williams," here's what google suggests... :

… because google knows what's crossworthy, and what isn't. Now maybe you're thinking "Well, of course it's not FAMOUS, that's the point … if it were famous, people could just fill in the circles …" Well, true. But then it seems like the bar is pretty low, fame-wise, for what you can build a puzzle around. This poem is designed to make WCW fans grin with smugness, and make most others think "I've never heard of this poem and this poem makes no sense." And here we get to the puzzle's biggest fault—this poem as represented in the grid is the SECOND VERSION [grrrrr…] SECOND VERSION, I SAY, of this poem. Now, true, I'd never heard of this poem at all, so it wouldn't have mattered to me, solving-wise, whether you labeled it appropriately or not, but if you're gonna be all "You Should Know This Poem, You Illiterate Cretin," then you have a certain obligation, I think, to make the clue accurate. The FIRST VERSION of this poem reads much, much more like a poem:


again (from poetry foundation)


Infinitely superior, IMHO, but I am a troglodyte when it comes to chic poetic tastes, so who knows? Anyway, the nonsense second version is a SECOND VERSION so say "second version," else wrong (or at least inaccurate / misleading) [n.b. arguably the clue has nothing to apologize for because it *said* 1935, the date of the second version, not 1933, the date of the first version, you ignoramus. And yet my objection stands].  But, BUT: here's the thing (another thing, the last thing). I probably would've forgiven all the artsy poetry in-joke baloney because, hey, one word per line, that's a neat novelty, and how can you turn away from the pure serendipitous coincidence that not only do WCW and the poem's title have the same number of letters in them, but that number is also the exact width of a standard Sunday puzzle! Fine, leeway granted. But the fill. Oh, god, it's the OPPOSITE of poetry. It's a red wheelbarrow to the groin. ANGERERERERERERER? SALIENCES? IRONERS? EIDERS? ELLIOTTOTTOTTS? So many ugh-some plurals—and soooo many cheater squares, you'd think filling the grid well would've been possible. This thing is hyper-black-squared, and yet I'm still left to deal with a mess of ANAT GST AAA MSN etc etc etc. I've literally never been to an ANGELO'S pizzeria, despite their alleged "common"-ness.


I appreciate the desire to bring some poetry into the grid. I do. Hurray for the spirit of the thing. But the thing itself. Forgive me. It was inedible. So bitter. And so cold.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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