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Word Ways

A. Ross Eckler

Abstract

"Hey, Dad," said my daughter, Peggy, home from college for the day, "I've written a poem for you to unscramble." (She's into creative writing this semester.) Setting my drink to one side -- a clear head is essential when reconsructing poetry -- I stared at the list of thirty words she thrust before me: anyway, but, California's, cares, crazy, dry, everyone's, fell, go, hanging, if, into, it, it, living, matter, ocean, off, on, on, or, so, somehow, the, there, they'd, underwater, whet, who, wouldn't. This, I thought, ought to be a cinch -- after all, there must be only one way to use words like California's, underwater and hanging in a coherent narrative. I adopted the strategy of looking for plausible phrases, and within half an hour set down the following.

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