Gibson's Hallowed Body of Work

Friday is the 72nd birthday of Henry Gibson, who did more for poetry on television than anyone since Bullwinkle. Of course, poetry and TV go together like bacon and ice cream, Sanskrit read to a pony, or Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, but that's a different story while here I'm just trying to get laughs in. Rowing even further out into the tenuous sea o' humor, not just marking time, it turns out he was born James Bateman but his career suffered arrested development until he took his "stage name" that is, indeed, based on dramatist Henrik Ibsen's name, and Tony Checkoff and Augie Indberg were already taken. With a secretly highfalutin name like that you'd imagine he'd never have a ghost of a chance to become a master builder of a great career, but somehow it did just go wild, ducky. And here is a Gibson poem:

Dogs Are Better Than Ants

Dogs are better than ants
Because you don't have to bend so far to pet them
In addition, they are sturdy old muzzlers
Who fetch us our slippers, papers, and twig chunks
Twig chunks
But most of all, they stay out of jelly jars and
Never go squish if you happen to step on them.