Your poetry is broken, please fix it

[j4]

A bug appeared in our tracking database the other day:

Title: Poem text is jumbled.
Description: Peter Reading's "And Now, a Quick Look at the Morning Papers".

Here's the full text of the (actually rather good) poem in question:

1 lled in
2 ar smas
3 e freed b
4 iremen from the wreckage of his Ren
5 fter both had been in collision wit
6 hrysler Avenger. The A49 was blocke
7 en to cut both drivers from their v
8 dition of the other driver as 'sati
9 rsday---the day after his fiftiet
10 or alcohol proved positive, a p
11 juries to his head and left l
12 mproving' said a hospital o
13 lso certified dead was Do
14 eaves a wife and two chi
15 aid 'He just drove ou
16 othing I could do.'
17 Parochial Church
18 early retire
19 any year
20 fini
21 ha

I spent the next 10 minutes alternating between re-reading the poem and trying to think of a tactful way of saying "It's meant to look like that, you philistine."

Future bugs expected include "Poem entitled 'Sonnet' has extra line"; "'Four Quartets' is missing 8 violins, 4 violas and 4 cellos" ...

Amused me, anyway, so I thought I'd post something amusing to counterbalance the previous miserable entry. Although, of course, the "amusing" post contains a more serious poem... does the comedy frame the tragedy, or vice versa? Half empty. Half full. Half past six, and time to go home.

Comments

[chrisvenus]

The scrap of newspaper makes some kind of sense. My first glance at it (and the title was my guide here) was that it was somebody picking up a newspaper (complete) and glancing through. Having given it some thought I was thinking that the structure was there to represent the fact that he was skim reading it and that the lines were getting shorter as the reader cared less and less about the content as he skimmed through it. The idea being that somebody died and the person reading it just can't bring himself to care enough to even read the details. However, I wouldn't be able to tell you in that idea why the lines start off so short. :)

Anyway, thank you (and ewx) for taking the time to further my education. As I re-read it it is more and more interesting. Well, that is probably this years culture for me sadly enough. :)

Cheers

Chris