[1]   This subtitle may be rephrased, “What I’ll do for you once I have overcome this writer’s block.”  This is not a parody of any specific poem, and basically plays upon the generic expectations of the reader-cum-listener.

[2]   This introductory stanza was the last to be written, an afterthought.  It establishes that the speaker is a writer who is having trouble completing the composition he’s been working on.  It is hoped that the explicit forewarning of this condition is not too much of a spoiler; I was trying to find a balance between a “punchline” (lines 23-24) that was insufficiently prepared, on one hand, and giving the conclusion away.  The following verses introduce the concept of a writer with writer’s block in a more subtle way.  The third word, “years,” signals the tendency of Master William to exaggerate.  Line 4 is a reference to Ko-Ko’s supplication to Katisha in The Mikado: “Behold!  A suppliant at your feet!”

[3]   In the main, the inner stanzas are after the tone, albeit exaggerated, of a standard love ballad, making rash promises in return for some requited love.   Cf. “Get with child a mandrake root. . .” and such.

[4]   Typically, the love balladeer would be seeking those “three little words” of Kalmar and Ruby fame, or a simpler “Yes!” (since line 22 asks for only “one word”). 

[5]   The name Penelope was written in at random in the compositional process, having an appropriate scansion; I planned to substitute something else later, assuming without much thought that it would not be hard to rhyme that name.  I wanted to find some really unrhymable word for this position, cf. the H. R. Pufinstuff TV show where “Witchy-Poo” sang “There ain’t no rhyme for oranges”.  But once the “dramatic monologue” demanded of me a retort, the name Penelope soon became inextricable from “Expiration Date,” rendering it too late to reconsider.

[6]   Number two of a one-two punch, confirming the pivotal line 23, in a rather Dorothy-Parkerish manner.  The desperation that creeps into the poet’s voice as an undertone is revealed more clearly to be that of a wordsmith who has become smithed-out, rather than the desperation of a lover in doubt.  The fact of the unrhymable word being a woman’s name suggests that the hearer will be all the more outraged, and in fact that the hearer is not the poet’s beloved.  The nature of the poet and of the addressee are clarified in the lady’s response.  Upon a second reading—if that does not assume far too much—it will be discovered that the poet has not actually mentioned love or seduction; it is only his diction that leads one to assume so.  The poet has not really said anything that might get him in trouble with his wife; he is only desperate for a rhyme.  But as a poet of, let’s say, the mid-to-late nineteeth century, even his ordinary speech has come to adopt the tone and conventions of romantic poetry.

[7]   The wine stewardess has mistaken the poet’s plea for inspiration (see “Inspiration,” above) for an attempt at seduction, but it seems that she would rather see him die in the grate.

[8]   After the manner of  “Go find yourself some other fool,” cf. Elvis Costello’s song of that name minus the “go.”

[9]   This reveals that the poet has been addressing his employee, and probably someone younger than himself.  Her diction imitates the poetic fluffiness of “thees” and “thys” that Wordworth wished to avoid in his written poetry, but reverts later to “ain’t,” suggesting that her elevated tone was used ironically.

[10]   The first of several plays on words related to poetry and musical forms:  Haikus, sonatinas, villanelles, and diamantes.

[11]   Recalling “The Cask of Amontillado,” by Edgar Allen Poe, involving murderous revenge.

[12]   The wine stewardess, like the writer, doesn’t know how to pluralize “Chablis,” in English, and so chooses an absurd form.

[13]   Pol Roger is a wine much favored by Count Zaroff in “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell.

[14]   Though the words are suitable to her work history, the phrase also sounds like a modern writer’s ambition, the Best Sellers list; this also is a rather impressionistic way to “lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative” (cf. Pooh-Bah’s lies to the Emperor of Japan in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado) of the poet’s social status as a celebrated writer.

[15]   Sam Weller was Mr. Pickwick’s steadfastly loyal servant in Dickens’s first best-seller, The Pickwick Papers.

[16]   Iambs and Spondees are different poetic feet that the writer had been teaching in his literature class at the time.  Cf. the “squinky-eyed” Popeye the Sailor Man’s catchline, “I yam what I yam.”

[17]   A blatant reference to Lewis Carroll’s poem from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was itself a parody anyhow:  “You are old, Father William. . .”  In this case, the William is hinted to be the same William in Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned,” i.e. Wordsworth himself.

[18]   Some Literature instructors feel that Emily Dickinson’s most pronounced poetic stumbling-block is her habit of using half-rhymes, such as “up” and “step”—as the writer was explaining in Lit class at the time.  Misplaced emphasis was not as much of a hurdle for most readers of Dickens; the lady is wrong there.

[19]   Master William has evidently tried to bring the verse drama back into fashion, hoping to rival Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, wherein the super-famous apostrophic monologue “To be or not to be, that is the question. . . .” was addressed to the skull of a court jester named Yorick.  Also cf. Frank Sinatra’s hit song “New York, New York” where he likewise apostrophizes, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere; it’s up to you, New York, New York!!!”

[20]   Beloved mentor and choral instructor at the University of Richmond, Dr. James Bryan Erb, was fond of kvetching to all of us, his choristers, “your accent is on the wrong syllable!”  Properly scanned this line will have the same effect.  Also, the pervasive enjambment (run-on lines) of this verse seem to scatter the emphases therein.  The verse has (at least) one more glaring and easily-correctable defect:  that  “problem” and “syllable” don’t rhyme too well.  It should occur to readers that “trouble” and “syllable” would be a better match.  There is precedent for this kind of composition; see for example the English translation of the musical “Les Miz:”  “There is a room that’s full of toys/There are a hundred boys and girls” where if “boys” and “girls” were switched the rhyme would come very easily, and therefore one hopes it was NOT reversed, intentionally.

[21]   Fleming developed the penicillin vaccine from black bread mold, if I recall correctly what my father taught me; black bread mold’s Latin name is Rhizopus negricons.  The implication is that the poet’s promises would be anticlimactic.  I think that Fleming's work (as dramatized on “X Minus One” by Boris Karloff on early television broadcasts) was more or less contemporary with the time of Wordsworth.  Thanks to the great movie "Serendipity" for reminding me that it wasn't Salk who did the work on moldy bread!

[22]  Simply a silly list that alternates between the sublime and the ridiculous, as my tenth-grade English teacher Mrs. Kauffman once commented on my creative writing homework.  “Triscuits,” of course, is an anachronism.

[23]   As the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5^th Ed, Vol. 2 love to remind readers, Wordsworth describes “all good poetry” as “the spontaneous flow of emotion” or “powerful feelings” that “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” (p. 160 and 168 of the Norton)

[24]   This is to be revealed, in two more lines, as the rhyme for “Penelope” that the poet had been so desperate for in “Inspiration;” though the tone of “Expiration Date” is one of mockery and refusal, the lady has at last supplied exactly what Master William had really wanted; therefore, he will probably—far from “firing” her as she suggests—give her a raise, at least, and then sent away.

[25]   Reference to a piece of light verse about the demise of bratty children, wherein William dies by his own carelessness, falling into the fireplace (see, “poetic” justice:  this is the fate that Master William has threatened to give himself!).  In that poem, the narrator concludes that although the room “grows chilly,/I haven’t the heart to poke poor Billy.”  Due to the situation of this poem, the adjective poor gets relegated to Penelope, whereas “Billy” is a “villain” and obviously is not “poor” in any sense.  Of course, in romantic poetry of Master William’s genre, fire and ardor represent love and desire, figurative death.

[26]   Demonstrates that the lady feels no jealousy of the poet’s wife or of Penelope, who turns out to be someone known to our wine stewardess.  Despite her ironic and somewhat abusive tone towards her master, the lady seems to harbor some empathy for anyone seemingly abused by the celebrated poet.  And it does in fact seem as if William may be writing a love poem for this girl Penelope.