"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a pangram, a sentence that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It was commonly used for testing typewriter keyboards. Nowadays it’s used when comparing fonts.
This poem has been taken from my Facebook page where I tend to post my more lighthearted verse. You can find others of that ilk by clicking on this link https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564
ON NOT HAVING WRITTEN …
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
That fox’s acrobatic leap
over the dog, perhaps asleep,
encompasses, let’s not forget,
each letter of the alphabet:
from A to Z, all have been used.
The writer cannot be accused
of laxity or sloppy work
and yet, somehow, those nine words irk.
There’s something quite ridiculous
in being so meticulous
and one can only speculate
on how one’s ego might inflate
in having come up with that line
by accident if not design.
Well I‘m not jealous, don’t resent
such cleverness, yet I dissent
from fulsome praise, I will not cheer
this alphabetic engineer.
The line’s poetic, I’ll admit:
none could deny the writer’s wit,
and it is visually rich
and memorable, if somewhat kitsch,
but it’s not Heaney or Ted Hughes:
the writer couldn’t fill their shoes.
In truth, when I reflect upon it,
it cannot match a decent sonnet.
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