Bob Brown, Gems

Gems (1931) is Bob Brown's portfolio of salaciously redesigned poetic chestnuts (or classic little poetic perfections that have come into the canon) in which the sin is entirely in omission, demonstrating that censorship produces the opposite result of what it intends. For Brown, "Pleasure in poetry comes largely from reading between the lines," and he invites the reader to join in and become "a competent co-creator."

Here are two of the "Gems":