Today’s Poem: Mr. Nobody

A genuine mark of poetic success? The power to stick in the mind.

Paul Seignac, The Broken Dish, c. 1900 (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1868, in the Riverside Magazine for Young People, Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) published a poem called “Mr. Nobody” — a light-verse tale of family members all denying responsibility for the mishaps that plague the household: every plate we break was cracked / By Mr. Nobody.

Unfortunately, th…