wit
Masters of the insult, the exit line, and the well-timed chicken.
A Dog of Matching Color
Women fainted at Franz Liszt's recitals, fought over his broken piano strings, and pressed him — perfumed letter after perfumed letter — for a lock of his hair.
The Honeymoon
The man who signed a urinal and hung it in a gallery quit modern art for competitive chess, and then married an heiress who lasted seven months.
The Girl Who Shot the Kaiser
In 1889, a five-foot Quaker in an ankle-length skirt asked the audience for a volunteer, and Kaiser Wilhelm II stood up.
This Ain't an Egg-Shop
Who walks 130 miles through an Antarctic winter, in total darkness, to fetch a penguin egg?
The Cape Compromise
She swam thirteen miles down the Thames, twenty-two down the Danube, and got arrested walking onto a beach in Boston.
The Formosan
How did a blonde Frenchman convince 1700s London he was from Formosa?
The Rope
What do you call a woman who wouldn't cross the lawn for Emerson, but rigged a rope from her window for children she refused to greet at the door?
The Stripper at the Typewriter
What was the headlining stripper at Minsky's doing at the dinner table with Auden, Britten, and McCullers?
Peace
He fed three thousand people in an afternoon, banned the word "hello" because it contained "hell," and quietly let his followers know he was God.
The Poet Ford Hired
What happens when a car company asks a sixty-seven-year-old Pulitzer poet to name their next sedan?
The Carpetbag Method
She told her relatives she was going on a pilgrimage, packed one carpetbag, and did not come back for sixteen years.
The Hippopotamus in the Marsh
What does a chess grandmaster do when his brain is hijacked, mid-game, by a children's poem about a stuck hippopotamus?