Voicemail

Children - Welcome back for another installment of "Adventures in Poetry"!

First, let's recap last week's lesson. After analyzing the metrical formulae underlying all "well-constructed" (or, for my more advanced students, "canonical") voicemail greetings, we studied an example of the generically "safe" model:

Please leave a message
At the tone
Speak slowly and clearly
Remember -
You're on the telephone!

And now, time to move on to something meatier!

For this week's lesson, we turn to the ground-breaking work of my good friend and mentor, T. Sedgwick, Freshman Associate at the Foundation for the Study of World Importance (headquartered in sunny Miami, Florida!) I direct your attention to his seminal study, "Voicemail Aesthetics: How to Lighten Your Load in a Rough Economy".

Specifically, we now examine the current voicemail Oeuvre of a literary queen who is no stranger to any of you - Her Incomparable Highness J. K. Rowling! Heads up! - here we go:

Hello
This is J. K. Rowling
I'm not at home
I've just gone bowling ...

Next week: Dame Barbara Cartland welcomes us to her Devonshire estate!