The Elements -- Tom Lehrer

(Poem #490) The Elements There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium, Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium, And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium, And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium, And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium. There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium, And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium, And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium. There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium, And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium, And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium, Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium. And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium, Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium. There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium, And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium, And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium, And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium. These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard, And there may be many others, but they haven't been discavard. -- Tom Lehrer

An astonishing feat of ingenuity - a perfectly rhymed, perfectly metrical parody
of 'The Major-General's Song' from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Pirates of Penzance'
[1]. It's rather mild by Lehrer's standards (no serial killers, dope peddlers or
mathematicians - indeed, no political incorrectness of any sort), but it's no
less briliant for that, and who am I to complain?

thomas.

[1] For Gilbert's immortal original, see poem #88

[Web stuff]

I found this in a Rhino records article about Tom Lehrer:

"'The Elements' was an attempt to top the song 'Tschaikowsky', by Ira Gershwin
and Kurt Weill. [Danny] Kaye sang it in the show Lady In The Dark, rattling off
at lightning speed the names of 50 Russian composers."

        -- [broken link] http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/72776lin.html

Other examples of poetic ingenuity abound on the Minstrels (no great surprise,
given our fondness for the genre). Check out:

'Juggler, Magician, Fool: A Pantoum', by Peter Schaeffer, at poem #195

'Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line', by George Starbuck,
at poem #194

And then there's Mike Keith's home page, which I have to admit is the most
mindblowingly amazing site I've come across in all my years of surfing the web:
http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/mikehome.htm

[More on Lehrer]

"Tom Lehrer was one of comedy's great paradoxes -- a respected Harvard
mathematics professor by day, he also ranked among the foremost song satirists
of the postwar era, recording vicious, twisted parodies of popular musical
trends which proved highly influential on the "sick comedy" revolution of the
1960s. Despite an aversion to the press and a relatively small recorded output,
Lehrer became a star, although he remained an enigma to even his most ardent
fans; he rarely toured, never allowed his photo to adorn album jackets, and
essentially retired from performing in 1965, leaving behind a cult following
which only continued to grow in his absence from the limelight."

        -- [broken link] http://www.allmusic.com

[Still More on Lehrer]

"Lehrer was born April 9, 1928; even as a child, he frequently parodied popular
songs of the day, and also learned to play piano. In 1944, he left New York City
to study math at Harvard, earning his master's degree within three years and
remaining as a graduate student through 1953. During his student years Lehrer
wrote The Physical Revue, a collection of academic song satires staged on campus
in January, 1951; an updated performance followed in May of the next year. He
also sang his parodies at coffeehouses and student gatherings throughout the
Cambridge, Massachusetts area; as demand for an album of his songs increased, he
spent $15 on studio time to cut Songs by Tom Lehrer, a ten-inch record privately
pressed in an edition of 400 copies.

The record sold out its entire run, and as the Harvard student body dispersed
across the country for Christmas vacation, the disc spread ("like herpes,"
Lehrer joked) far beyond its intended local audience. Soon Lehrer was inundated
with requests for copies from across the nation; after several re-pressings,
Songs by Tom Lehrer sold an astounding 350, 000 copies on the strength of tracks
like "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" (about a man who cut off his girlfriend's hand
in order to nibble on her fingertips), "Irish Ballad" (a buoyant romp about a
killing spree) and "My Home Town" (concerning a place where murderers teach
school and old perverts operate the candy store).

In 1955, Lehrer was inducted to serve in the Army, and was honorably discharged
two years later. Finally, in 1959 he recorded a follow-up, More of Tom Lehrer,
featuring "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and "The Masochism Tango; " the same
collection of songs were also recorded during a live performance at Harvard, and
issued simultaneously as An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. A tour of Europe
followed, resulting in another concert collection, Tom Lehrer Revisited, which
constituted live renditions of the tracks from the debut LP. However,
controversial reactions to his "sick" comedy during a series of Australian
performances prompted Lehrer to retire, and he returned full-time to his first
love, teaching."

        -- [broken link] http://www.allmusic.com