As a hobby, Dave Arns of Arns Publishing and Design has been writing poetry (and other things) for many years, just for the fun of it; below are some of the poems (and other things) he's written.

Scientific Poems

This first group is scientific poems--poems that discuss some scientific principle with enough accuracy to allow someone to actually learn about the subject at hand, should he so desire.

The poems in this section cover such abstruse topics as organic chemistry, the operation of lasers, quantum mechanics, and astronomical phenomena:

Farewell Poems

This next group is an accumulation of poems Dave wrote for colleagues that were leaving his Information Engineering (a.k.a. "Learning Products" or "Technical Writing") department at Hewlett-Packard. These were written for the enjoyment of the people leaving, as well as those remaining, and as such, there are lots of inside jokes that may be rather opaque to you if you do not know the people who were the subject matter of the poems. To minimize this "opacity," each poem has a short introductory section that gives a bit of context, in hopes that your reading experience will make more sense.

Also, if you read all the these poems at one sitting, you might become painfully aware of some of Dave's favorite poetic styles and scansion patterns; some of them may appear rather repetitive. Our apologies for this--originally, most of these poems that have similar scansions were written and presented months or years apart, and repetitiveness was not nearly so much of an issue. And, one of Dave's common styles is to be a bit melodramatic here and there; in the context of these parting colleagues, it was good for a chuckle.

Ode to John Woods (February, 1990)
Beatty at the Bat (Stu Beatty; June, 1990)
Lady Di (Diana Stroyan; June, 1991)
Cap'n Steve (Steve Kauder; January, 1993)
Farewell to Denise Praizler (January, 1993)
Eulogy for Rosemary (Rosemary Kramer; January, 1993)
Ode to Jay (Jay Haskell; January, 1993)
Farewell to Wendy (Wendy Milner; March, 1993)
The Village Wordsmithy (Ray Monson; January, 1994)
O Betho! Our Betho! (Beth Omer; May, 1994)
Our Feet Are the Same, Dan. . . (Dan Garwood; February, 1996)
. . .the Departure of Elaine Batton. . . (April, 1996)
Farewell to Carolyn (Carolyn Beiser; September, 1997)
Farewell to Doc Douglass (Kent Douglass; September, 1998)
Go to Meetings? Nevermore! (Van Walther; March, 1999)

Mother Goose, Ph.D.

Here's a completely different kind of diversion: Mother Goose rhymes translated into technical scientific jargon. Technically, these "new versions" are not poems (well, one of them is), but since the original Mother Goose rhymes were indeed poems, they are included here. Enjoy!

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