{"id":1650,"date":"2008-07-23T15:53:37","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T15:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2008-07-23T15:53:37","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T15:53:37","slug":"of-poets-and-wabbits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1650","title":{"rendered":"Of poets and wabbits."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, none other than former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins published an essay in <i>The Wall Street Journal<\/i> called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB121460099221711769.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today\">Inspired by a Bunny Wabbit<\/a>&#8220;, wherein he extolls the virtues of Warner Brothers&#8217; Looney Tunes cartoons.  He outlines their influence on his work, and even includes four poems from his first published collection written about the four pillars of Looney (&#8220;Bugs&#8221;, &#8220;Daffy&#8221;, &#8220;Porky&#8221; and &#8220;Elmer&#8221;).  I love this highbrow-meets-lowbrow mentality, discussing the pleasures that can be derived from these works that most English professors would probably publicly deride &#150; and it&#8217;s not just knee-slapping humor that Collins advocates, but also the bizarre takes on sexuality and cosmopolitanism that run rampant in these classic animations.  I&#8217;ve long believed that there&#8217;s plenty of rich material to be found in classic popular culture, and hearing a poet laureate share that opinion is wonderfully vindicating.  Now to write my epic poem based on <i>Terry and the Pirates&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, none other than former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins published an essay in The Wall Street Journal called &#8220;Inspired by a Bunny Wabbit&#8220;, wherein he extolls the virtues of Warner Brothers&#8217; Looney Tunes cartoons. He outlines their influence on his work, and even includes four poems from his first published collection [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-qC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}