Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Hampton Burt

Hampton grew up with the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll and others. With such inspiration he began to write...

And the result is such unconventional poems as “How Young Splabbid Killed the Snord.” It borrows the theme of the mock epic from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” and also imitates it by using function words to convince the reader that the sometimes semi-intelligible meaning words do make sense after all.

The poem has no portmanteau words of the kind explicated by Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland. Rather, Hampton has fun with rhythms and internal rhyme. Readers should beware lest such verses as...

For every
Leathery,
Dressed up and feathery,
Dumb, tied down, but not very tethery,
Snooty old Snord
And its slimy young mate
Only slowed up
And sat down and ate,

...become a mnemonic virus.

Hampton Burt’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Hampton. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!