Why

Why

By William Jay Smith b. 1918
Why do apricots look like eggs?
             Why?
Why do sofas have four legs?
             Why?
Why do buses stop and go?
Why do roosters strut and crow?
Why do bugles blow and blow?
Why is Sunday? I don’t know
             Why!

William Jay Smith, "Why" from Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense. Copyright © 1980 by William Jay Smith.  Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Source: Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1980)

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Poet William Jay Smith b. 1918

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William Jay Smith told Contemporary Authors: "I am a lyric poet, alert, I hope, as my friend Stanley Kunitz has pointed out, 'to the changing weathers of a landscape, the motions of the mind, the complications and surprises of the human comedy.' I believe that poetry should communicate: it is, by its very nature, complex, but its complexity should not prevent its making an immediate impact on the reader. Great poetry must have . . .

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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