I’d like to follow the previous posts celebrating National Poetry Month (here, here, and here) with a hastily composed bookspine poem titled “The Happy Lawyer”. I imagine that before they printed words on magnets, people would rearrange their books to write poems on the fly. Bookspine poetry is celebrated by libraries and readers alike.

This month is National Poetry Month, as noted by Professor Lisa Mazzie and Professor Bruce Boyden in their blogs.

Those of you who are interested in both poetry and law would enjoy reading Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present, edited by David Kader and Michael Stanford. Many poems selected for the anthology address some aspect of civil or criminal trial law. The following poem by William Cowper is about a property dispute.

William Cowper (1731-1800)

The Case Won

Two neighbors furiously dispute
A field the subject of the suit;
Trivial the spot–yet such the rage
With which the combatants engage,
‘Twere hard to tell who covets most
The prize, at whatsoever cost.
The pleadings swell.  Words still suffice;
No single word but has its price;
No term but yields some fair pretence
For novel and increased expence.

Defendant, thus, becomes a name
Which he that bore it may disclaim,
Since both, in one description blended,
Are plaintiffs when the suit is ended.