Snoopyism

 

Take out the “stormy” part,

And “It was a dark night”

As most nights are,

When it happened to rain

Snoopy went for this

(the words appear above

his doghouse, when

he’s typing—how does

the typewriter stay perched

along the top

like that?)

But the words were borrowed

From other sources (more

than one writer claims

the cliché!), and we

Smiled, because we were certain

We could do better

It was night; there was rain

Okay, now your turn

 

C L Couch

 

 

(see, Snoopy is a beagle character in the Peanuts comics and cartoons, and Snoopy like to write while on top of his doghouse (Snoopy’s always on top, not in, his doghouse), and the famous words he quotes are “It was a dark and stormy night” that have been used now and then by writers who evidently had nothing else to say

and I keep forgetting that Madeleine L’Engle uses the phrase intentionally (knowing it was cliché) to start her novel A Wrinkle in Time)

 

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash