A lovely bit of nonsense -- courtesy of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear

As Roald Dahl's immortal Willy Wonka says in Charlie and the Cholocate Factory, "A little footling about keeps one from going up the spout!" I don't know why the Brits are so inspired at nonsense, but it's English writers I turn to when I need a bit of nonsense in my life. From Edward Lear's nonsense poems to poems and Alice books by the mathematician Lewis Carrol (a.k.a. Charles Dodgson), they are absolutely transcendant, resplendant and utterly nonsensical! The beauty of nonsense is that it can illuminate reality in a way that straight attacks cannot. In the poem "Haddock's Eyes" in Through the Looking Glass, the White Knight recites a poem that parodies the then popular poem "Resolution and Independence" by William Wordsworth. But it also says a great deal about inattention and forgetfulness, and even inability to absorb what another says:

I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.

The narrator is busy inventing an idea for dying whiskers green, and cannot recall anything said:

So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.

Again, the narrator and questioner is busy thinking his own thoughts -- how to feed oneself on batter. Each time, the question is repeated, the old man gets roughed up a bit more:

I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"

The narrator finally hears the old man's answer when the old man wishes to drink his health. (Now, how did the narrator repeat all the earlier nonsense if he didn't hear it? -- that's nonsense for you!) So, we have an entertaining meditation on our inability to listen, to focus outside ourselves. Another lovely nonsense poem is "The Jumblies" by Edward Lear. What an adventure! What a think-outside-the-box group! Maybe it helps that their heads are green and their hands are blue:
The Jumblies

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, `You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, `Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

(snip; link to nonsenselit.org for the complete epic of the Jumblies!)

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, `How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, `If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

By Edward Lear. The illustration of the Jumblies voyage is by Vera Stone Norman, at Ongoing-Tales.com, which seems to be part of Antelope E-Books.com, offering a variety of old children's poems in a new format. My memory of children's stories and poems are strongly attached to the illustrations in the books I was shown. I think this is an interesting new way to present children's lit.