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October 1947 QST
 Table of Contents
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles
from
QST, published December 1915 - present (visit ARRL
for info). All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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 I have never been a fan of "free verse" poetry,
be it in the form of a
sonnet or otherwise.
In my humble opinion,
poems that do not both rhyme
and have some measure of meter
represent laziness on the part of the "poet."
Without requiring poetry to rhyme,
all that is required to declare anything a poem
is to break the writing into poem-like
lines,
et voilà - you have a poem.
It is like slinging a brush-load of paint
onto
a canvas and calling it art.
Example -- I hereby proclaim the above to be a poem because I broke it into
separate lines - see what
I mean? That ain't no poem; we both know it.
I will excuse the following example since it was written by
a Ham about Amateur Radio - although most of its lines do actually rhyme. It does,
fortunately, satisfy the definition of a sonnet regarding
juxtaposing unrelated concepts. Sometimes it's just hard to find
appropriate rhyming words, especially for ones like silver, angel, and bulb.
Internet searches make finding rhyming words much simpler.
Here are a few other electronics-themed poems:
A Radioman's Nightmare,
The Day Before Christmas,
Sonnet of a Ham,
Unpopular Electronics,
Ode to a New Rig,
Power Supply,
More "Tower" to You, Requiem,
Pre-Radio,
What Is It?,
Ravin
Sonnet of a Ham
Today I held the wide world in my hand;
Space rolled away and England's sun was low,
As Ken of Cambridge told me of his land.
Next, fast as thought, as he said, "Cheerio,"
I raced the sun, until at zenith time
O'er western plains I said "Hello" to Lee -
Then "73," and morning skies were mine
As John became my host at Waikiki.
The XYL recalled my wandering
To Georgia's pines, for dinnertime was nigh.
When, afterward, with Venus shimmering
Beside a thin new moon and Mars' red light,
I gazed their way, and wondered as night fell -
"Cannot we hold these in our hands as well?"
- Ewell G. Pigg, W4KGD
Posted October 20, 2022
(updated from original post on 7/19/2016)
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