Kyouck and Gobble

The Nice Work Culture Committee admit to having had a setback in our effort to raise the tone of this joint, but we are not so easily discouraged as to let creators’ rights hold us back forever. We decided to dig sufficiently deep to find someone dead long enough for his copyrights to have expired too. After much sweaty spadework we unearthed…

The Hoosier Poet

That’s the nickname of James Whitcomb Riley who has long been reabsorbed into his beloved Indiana soil. He was born in… oh, you can look up his birth and death dates as easily as we can, and besides, do you really care? He lived somewhere in that spacious time between powdered wigs and Model Ts. Fill in the details yourself.

For this, our little Poetry Nook, we chose one of Riley’s most famous poems, When the Frost is on the Punkin. Understanding the modern reader’s impatience with unaccompanied lyric poetry, however, we present only the first and last couplets.

When The Frost is on the Punkin

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock…

(yadda yadda yadda)

…I’d want to ‘commodate ‘em–all the whole-indurin’ flock–
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!