CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE

Ten years ago, Professor Jerrold Zar composed a brilliant poem, which he called Candidate for a Pullet Surprise. Here's the first verse:

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Since then, thousands of readers around the world have chuckled over the poem and emailed it to their friends. It's also a favourite on the internet. Google has some 1420 references to it on websites which have copied the original words, or posted versions amended by various wits and halfwits. Some have retitled it as Owed to a Spelling Checker or Spellbound. Many webmasters have added Unknown author, or Anon. One says Sauce unknown.

Here is the complete, official version, published with the author's kind permission:

By a remarkable coincidence, Jerrold Zar's experience closely resembles that of another gifted comic poet, Gene Ziegler, the overlooked author of a "stolen" poem that's now best known as If Dr Seuss Were a Technical Writer. Both authors were professors at US universities, both their names start with Z, and both poems were written in 1994.

We found Zar's bio on the internet, and emailed him, seeking details of his original poem and asking if he was aware of this strange coincidence He replied:

Indeed, I have seen Gene Ziegler's poem more than once on the Internet!

I am aware that my poem has been distributed many, many times, via e-mail, at Web sites, and in printed newsletters and books, very often without attribution and in a badly altered form. As you note, my poem was published in 1994 (and republished "by popular demand" in 2000).

I recently retired from Northen Illinois University, where, after several years as a professor of biological sciences, I served for 18 years as Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Research and Dean of the Graduate School. In the latter position I presided over 53 graduation ceremonies for master's- and doctoral-degree students.

At these events I and the University president were expected to deliver some inspirational remarks to the graduates as they went forth with their advanced degrees to improve the world in a variety of fields.

I soon evolved my remarks into something out of the ordinary, such as poetry with both comical and serious elements and a quasi-serious discourse on lessons from "The Wizard of Oz" that are pertinent to such graduates.

Shortly after my retirement, the University reformatted the undergraduate-student and graduate-student graduation ceremonies in a fashion that excluded the Dean of the Graduate School from making formal remarks to the assemblage. (The purported reason for this change was, in part, accommodation of the audiences in the available campus venues; but I do wonder if it was to prevent any future dean from presenting the kinds of literary offerings that I produced.)

Needless to say: I have NOT read aloud the spelling-checker poem; it rather loses its impact if it is not experienced visually!

We asked Zar: "Why didn't you call your poem Candied Date for a Pull It Surprise? That would have increased the word count by two."

He replied: "Yes, there are other homophonous titles that could have been used. And in the first stanza, halve could have been used in place of have and Marx instead of marks. My thought at the time was to begin the poem relatively correctly and then quickly lapse into the homophones."