Happy 165th birthday to Dr. Sigmund Freud!
COUNSELOR: Psychology Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
DR. FREUD (caller): Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
COUNSELOR: As opposed to what? A pocketknife?
Leonard Cohen calls the Rock & Roll Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Rock & Roll Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
LEONARD COHEN (caller): They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom
COUNSELOR: That sounds cruel & unusual. What was the charge?
COHEN: For trying to change the system from within.
COUNSELOR: Which administration?
COHEN: I’m coming now
COUNSELOR: Oh. That should just be 4 to 8 years of boredom.
COHEN: I’m coming to reward them.
COUNSELOR: That sounds premature. What are you getting them?
COHEN: First we take Manhattan
COUNSELOR: I thought they had New York locked down.
COHEN: Then we take Berlin!
COUNSELOR: But that’s not–…oh, wait. Do you mean the cities? Or, like…a cocktail and a jelly doughnut?
Joe Biden calls the Policy Crisis Line
From the President’s Joint Address to Congress, April 28, 2021 (paraphrased in the presidential Twitter account).
COUNSELOR: Policy Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
PRESIDENT BIDEN (caller): Trickle-down economics has never worked.
COUNSELOR: So what do you think we should do about it?
BIDEN: It’s time to grow the economy from the ground up and the middle out.
COUNSELOR: Well said! Just once I’d like to hear someone in Washington say that.
Marcus Aurelius calls the Poetry Crisis Line
Happy 1900th birthday to Marcus Aurelius!
ROSIE (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
MARCUS AURELIUS (caller): You are a little soul, carrying about a corpse
ROSIE: Uh…wouldn’t that be the other way around?
MARCUS AURELIUS: as Epicetus used to say.
ROSIE: I haven’t read it. Transferring you to Epics.
Amanda Gorman calls the Poetry Crisis Line
PATIENCE (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
AMANDA GORMAN (caller): There’s a poem in this place.
PATIENCE: Are you sure?
GORMAN: In the footfalls in the halls.
PATIENCE: Get outta there!
From “In This Place” by Amanda Gorman
Christopher Marlowe calls the Poetry Crisis Line
KIM (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (caller): Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
KIM: No, this is the Poetry Crisis Line. But I do fly model planes on weekends.
From Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. Read an excerpt here.
.
If All Poems Were Limericks: The Tyger, by William Blake
Does anyone else find it od
That Tygers come from the same God
Who also made Sheepe
& Sm. thinges that creepe
& Eagles & Beagles & Scrod?
If All Poems Were Limericks: Keeping Things Whole, by Mark Strand
The air’s only there where I’m not,
and that is the reason I’ve got
for moving around
(traversing the ground),
so I tend to do that a lot.
Read the original here.
Andrew Marvell calls the Poetry Crisis Line
JERRY (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
ANDREW MARVELL (caller): My vegetable love
JERRY: Are you into carrots? Cucumbers? I’m not judging.
MARVELL: shall grow
JERRY: Prize-winning zucchini?
MARVELL: vaster than empires
JERRY: Sequoias?
MARVELL: and more slow.
JERRY: That giant subterranean fungus in Oregon?
Poe & Blake
In honor of his best-known poem, artists often depict Edgar Allan Poe with a raven on his shoulder.
They tend not to do this with William Blake.