Yana Kane-Esrig ’85
Celebrate Constraints
Constraints challenge complacency, confront confusion, curb crass consumerism.
Constrained capabilities catalyze communications, collaboration, creativity.
Courtesy constrains crankiness. Calm compassion constrains clashing creeds.
Celebrate constraints!
Sally Van Doren ’84
Here is a poem from a five-poem series I wrote called “Found Lipograms.” These lipograms each omit one vowel and borrow language from other sources of literature, such as poems and essays. In “Found Lipogram II,” the letter “e” is not used. The poem owes a debt to Robert Frost’s poem, “Two Tramps in Mud Time.”
Found Lipogram II
Splitting my avocation in two
I found tramps walking back
and forth through an unimportant
cloud in my soul’s mind. I told
my hulking visitors to lurk
in that wood which rocks
soft and smooth in my sunlit
mortal logic. My arch right might
not sway nothing’s living will,
but most of my moist crystal
hoof prints (possum thoughts,
blossom songs) look to witching-
wands for warm frosts, wind
without a chill. I must block out
months of snow to control this
mud color blowing out of pond
and brook. My ruts hold spring
at bay. You’d think I had a foot
to grip what my tooth tools miss,
but I don’t. I show things I won’t
know in April and May. Blown
aloft, my fools and I stay with our
common jobs; for good, for play.
Robert J. Vanderbei, professor of operations research and financial engineering
I love wpdorlay. In waht is wttrein hree, eevry wrod has been scearmlbd as
fololws: The frist letetr and the last lteter of ecah word are left in pclae
but the mldide ltteres are rnldomay scmrlbaed. It is aazinmg that such
mesesd up wtiring is stlil mtsloy libelge.
(Not a serious contender, I’m sure, but thought I might point out that the only anagram of “teach” is “cheat.”)
Aaron Snyder ’60
I know of no aberration that elicits less sympathy than obsession with palindromes; even my otherwise delightful children disappear when I offer my oeuvre. So I’m very glad to have someone look at these four (in order of increasing length).
1. Sign at an animal shelter: Step on no pets.
2. Confusion at roulette table: Red now I wonder
3. Cost of unconstrained passion: Eros won I now sore.
4. Anti-sorcery screed: Deliver evil eye live reviled.
G.C. Hildebrand ’64
With regard for Professor Katz’s search for palindromes:
Scrawled in a phone booth in the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project (I remember it from some time in the early ’80s): “Dam! I saw a nut not net a ten-ton tuna! Was I mad!”
My own from the early ’90s: “Eton Note: Sore buns? Snub Eros!”
Keep up the good work – which must be something on the order of tracking endless “ear-worms”...
Rob Bernstein ’08
This is the palindrome I came up with while on a flight: “No, it an elk city tickle nation!”
N. Pike Johnson Jr. ’59
Please profusely praise popular prolifically publishing Princeton philosophy professors – probably persuasively pragmatic.
David V. Forrest ’60
Aardvarks accept ennui.
Llamas hiss, kittens purr,
Puppies wiggle free.
Robbers, revving,
Skiing, trekking,
Dizzily suffer
Vacuum powwows,
Summer wedding foods.
Hh jj qq xx yy