SOURCE: Kelly, Richard. “Poetry.” In Lewis Carroll, pp. 44-77. Boston: Twayne, 1977.

In the following excerpt, Kelly discusses Carroll's poetry, maintaining that his serious verse is of poor quality, while his humorous verse is brilliant.

I Serious Verse

Lewis Carroll's serious poetry is very dull. Most of his comic verse on the other hand, is generally amusing and sometimes exhibits a genius that remains unrivaled. Nonsense poems such as “Jabberwocky,” “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and The Hunting of the Snark, and parodies like “You are old, Father William,” “Speak roughly to your little boy,” and “Twinkle, twinkle, little Bat” are inspired works that have become an integral part of our literary and popular culture. The gulf between his serious and humorous poetry is as vast as that between Carroll the Oxford don and Carroll the creator of Alice. Although the focus of this chapter will be upon his...