Monday, May 16, 2016

Nonsense train to Poland!

It has been some time since the nonsense train boarded, but here I yam once again--and this time, after purchasing my long yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it, I'll ride the rails until they begin running in zigzags like one letter Z put next to another Z and the next and the next, until I get to Poland. Poland! Land of the mischievous anti-communist dwarves, of Stanisław Barańczak, Julian Tuwim, and a most remarkable tradition of limerick. You may recall, long-time fans, of two hapless hunks clunking through Poland, seven years ago... and we have the blog entry to prove it.

This time, though, I mean business, which means traveling in a Nonsense Posse, including Björn Sundmark, Olga Howłownia, Sirke Happonen, and Agata Hołobut--all forces of fierce and flamboyant flapdoodle. Our first stop is Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where we will discourse on nonsensical cutlery, taxonomic taxidermy, and tissues of nonsense translation. My focus will be on non-linear lollipops, as seen below:



Another zigzag railway will bring us Wroclaw, and the Child and the Book conference. Our panel there, ostensibly on "play," is a nonsensical frolic through different follyicular foci. I'll be talking about Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, Paul Bunyan, and American nonsense (excluding politics, which is too sad to mention at the moment).


I'll check in along the way, but until then, on the train I go, to hear the steam hog's nose choked and spit pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, as the train runs on and on to where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky. Not even the Kings of Egypt with all their climbing camels, and all their speedy, spotted, lucky lizards, ever will have a ride like this.

*note bene: Sandburgian verbiage freely floated here, but I assure you no rootabagas were destroyed in the making.