Ground Zero

Professor Pennywhistle poses in his poshest professional apparel, which could pass, perplexingly, for a particularly pretty peignoir. But it isn't.

Welcome, one and all, to Pennywhistlestop. Professor Pennywhistle sends heartiest congratulations to you for finding him, and extends his profound appreciation for the assistance you are poised (which has nothing to do with arsenic or cyanide, thankfully, and everything to do with your intelligence and masterful bearing, never mind your wonderful shoes) to proffer.

Your arrival portends marvelous things. (While it looks like “pretend,” which is something Professor Pennywhistle hopes you do expansively and with regularity, as he does, in actual fact “portend” comes from the Latin protendere, which means to extend or stretch forward, from which it borrows its futural orientation, with the additional significance of a promise.)

So what is promised? If you will promise to give honest and constructive feedback, Professor Pennywhistle promises to prune the pedagogical parts as much as possible. That is, he’ll try not to be boring, or to show off.

And now to the point. As you probably know (being both precocious and perspicacious) the professor proposes to publish not one, but mutliple books whose purpose is to introduce as much of the world’s population as possible to the pleasure and power of poetry. In order to accomplish this, he’d prefer to pitch the poems to potential publishers and other representation together with your perceptions and perspectives.

Each of the proposed collections has its own page, and there you will find portions of some of the poems, all arranged perfectly in the menus at right. Some of the collections are at very early stages, and thus will provoke only limited comment. Poems for the Precocious, however, is complete, although it may not persist so. Perhaps. Please feel perfectly at liberty to peruse the pages, complete the polls, and leave comments–general or specific–wherever opportunity and good sense persuade you to.

You have, as ever, his perpetual appreciation,

Professor Percival P. Pennywhistle, PhD

In passing: The Pied Piper and his plethora of pipsqueaks perceptible at the top of this page are portrayed by the particularly perspicacious painter James Maxwell, who has permitted Professor Pennywhistle to post the picture, but prohibits its printing by the professors, pipsqueaks, parents, people, or other persons: period.

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