The Puzzling World of Paradox Poetry
I love optical illusions, puzzles, riddles, and brainteasers—almost as much as I enjoy magic tricks. Like a well-executed magic trick, a good puzzle can mystify, delight, and entertain an audience with what seems like an impossible situation. If you’ve been reading my Ruseletter recently, you might know I’ve been exploring how rhyming patter can enhance a magical effect (see Monthly Update #23 and #24 for details).
In this blog post, I’ll discuss a well-known “paradox poem”—a type of poem that presents a seemingly contradictory or impossible situation—to examine the intersection of magic, puzzles, and poetry.
What is a Paradox Poem?
The other day, I was thrilled to discover “Poetry in Motion” 1, a brilliant card trick by the late Scottish magician Roy Walton (based on a Bob Neale effect) that pairs skillful card manipulation with one of the most haunting poems ever written, “Antigonish” or “The Man Who Wasn’t There” by Hughes Mearns:
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I wish, I wish he’d go away…When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me.
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door…Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…
Learn The Little King Who Wasn’t There 👑
I share my personal handling of “Poetry in Motion”, called “The Little King Who Wasn’t There”, with paying subscribers in Packet Trick Paradise #7, a regular Ruseletter column in which I publish some of my original packet tricks.
While it’s not technically a riddle, it has all the mysterious appeal of one. Like a well-crafted magic trick, it presents us with an impossible situation: a recurring encounter with someone who simultaneously exists and doesn’t exist. Some literary critics consider “Antigonish” a nonsense poem because it is lighthearted, whimsical, and doesn’t seem to make much sense. However, I think a better name for this type of rhyming verse is a “paradox poem” because at the heart of the piece is an impossible situation—repeatedly encountering someone who isn’t there. This, as already stated, makes it analogous to a magic trick or optical illusion.
So, what is a paradox anyway? A paradox is an absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that, when investigated or explained, may prove to be well-founded. In simple terms, it’s a contradiction which has the ring of truth about it. After all, many people, including myself, are familiar with that eerie feeling of not being alone, even when we’re the only living person in the room. For the record, I don’t believe in ghosts. My mother promised to haunt me when she died and help with the occasional magic trick. Well, it’s been twenty years, and I’m still waiting! 👻
The central paradox of “Antigonish” is that the speaker keeps meeting and interacting with someone who doesn’t appear to physically exist. It’s impossible to meet someone who isn’t there, yet the speaker does exactly that. This contradiction, stark and unyielding, creates a creepy atmosphere in the poem—how can you wish for someone who doesn’t exist to go away? How can someone who isn’t there slam a door?
History of “Antigonish”
The poem, with its apparent themes of loneliness and grief, could easily allude to someone who has lost themselves or is experiencing a profound sense of sorrow. Or, perhaps it’s simply about a person with a mirror on their stairs but not in their hallway! It playfully uses paradox to explore themes of perception, reality, and perhaps the speaker’s mental state or deepening sense of paranoia. The contradictory nature of the narrative makes it both whimsical and slightly unsettling at the same time. However, the true meaning of this popular poem is a lot more straightforward than this.
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| A photograph of Hughes Mearns. Photo Credit: Univeristy of Chicago Divinity Scool/Ruseletter. |
The poem “Antigonish” is about a ghostly presence, inspired by newspaper reports of a haunted house in the small Canadian city of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Mearns first penned the amusing verse as part of a play called “Psyco-Ed”, a work he crafted for his undergraduate English class at Harvard University around 1899. This makes “Antigonish” an excellent basis for a spooky or bizarre magick performance.
In 1910, Mearns brought the play to life with an amateur dramatic group called the Plays and Players. But the poem’s journey was far from over. It wasn’t until twelve years later, in 1922, that it was printed stand-alone by Franklin P. Adams (known by his initials F.P.A) in “The Conning Tower” in the New York World, a popular newspaper published from 1860 to 1931. Thanks to the paper’s wide circulation and the popularity of the column, the poem was subsequently included in many poetry anthologies in the following decades.
In most of these early poetry collections, the poem is printed as a quatrain (a four-line stanza with alternate rhymes). In other words, it has a single verse, and takes the following form:
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there!
He wasn’t there again to-day!
I wish, I wish he’d stay away!
Notice the last line of the verse says “stay away” instead of the now usual “go away” phrasing and that the speaker is “going up the stair” instead of standing upon it. This suggests that Hughes Mearns may have only initially written the first verse and that the second and third were added by himself—or another writer entirely—sometime later. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate a copy of the play “Psyco-Ed” or the March 27th edition of the New York World from 1922 (the first time the poem saw print).
This theory finds support in Martin Gardner’s book Best Remembered Poems (1992, pages 106-107), where the renowned mathematician, magician, and author notes that the “quatrain was originally written for the play Psyco-Ed, which Mearns wrote in 1899 for an undergraduate English class at Harvard.” 2 Gardner mentions that Mearns observed that the poem can be interpreted as describing the agony of wives with absent husbands. Strangely, he also suggests the name “Antigonish” is derived from “Antigona” or “Antigonia”, the latter being an ancient city in Syria. In this case, he might be mistaken because, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Antigonish was well-known for its many hauntings. The Scots who settled there were strong believers in ghosts and the spirit world, and there are many famous ghost stories accociated with the local area.
The poem gained immense popularity in 1939 when the popular swing band the Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded a musical version of it called “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There”, featuring vocals by Tex Beneke and a musical arrangement by Bernie Hanighen. Harold Adamson, the lyricist of “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There”, made a few minor changes to the original words to suit the big band swing genre and may have written the additional verses. The recording became a major hit, firmly establishing the poem in popular culture, where it has remained ever since.
The poem has not only been turned into a hit song, but it has also been adapted by screenwriters for both big-budget Hollywood films and smaller-scale TV productions. It’s recited in the 1998 musical drama Velvet Goldmine and appears multiple times in the 2003 psychological thriller Identity.
The poem’s paradoxical themes make it a natural fit for mystery crime dramas. “Antigonish” appears in a 2002 episode of Midsummer Murders called “A Worm in the Bud”. In this classic instalment of this much-loved cosy British crime drama, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby recites the single-verse version of the poem to Sergeant Troy while the discussing the mysterious murder of a woman in a local wood. Similarly, the poem is recited by Inspector Jack Frost in the 2008 A Touch of Frost episode “Mind Games” (Series 14, Episode 1) .
In 2015, the poem “Antigonish” was featured in an episode of Death in Paradise titled “Stab in the Dark” (Series 4, Episode 1). Elias Thomson, a rum distillery owner, is murdered during a séance held during the fictional festival of Fête Mouri. The initial suspect is the spirit of a murdered servant from the 1850s named Mama Beth. The poem is cleverly woven into the storyline, and paying close attention while watching will help you uncover the murderer’s identity.
Finally, the poem plays a pivotal role in a 2022 episode of the UK TV show Father Brown called “The Enigma of Antigonish” (Series 9, Episode 9). It serves as a vital clue that assists the crime-solving Roman Catholic priest in catching the murderer of ex-convict Finbar Finch.
As you can probably tell, I love mystery crime dramas! I think they’re an excellent source of inspiration for magicians, mentalists, and mystery performers.
Later Antigonishes
Due to the poem’s popularity, many scholars call any quatrain involving something or someone that isn’t there a “mearns” in honour of Hughes Mearns. He also wrote several parodies of his most famous poem, calling them “Later Antigonishes”. Here are five; I suspect he wrote more:
As I was sitting in my chair
I knew the bottom wasn’t there,
Nor legs, nor back, but I just sat
Ignoring little things like that.As I was falling down the stair
I met a bump that wasn’t there;
It might have put me on the shelf
Except I wasn’t there myself.As I was letting down my hair
I met a guy who didn’t care;
He didn’t care again today—
I love‘em when they get that way!One night I met when stepping out
A gal who wasn’t thereabout;
I said, “Hel-lo! And how are you!”
She didn’t say; so I never knew.As I was robbing Chelsea Bank
I met a non-existent Zanque;
He did not whiffle, wooze or wup—
That’s why I had to shut him up.
My favourite “mearns” is “House Guest Etiquette” from the December 1950 edition of The Atlantic:
I MET a lady in the hall
And she had nothing on at all;
I gave no greeting, nor did she—
We had not yet met formally.
Many writers have written parodies of “Antigonish”. For example, this one appeared in the pages of MAD Magazine:
As I was going down the stair,
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today;
He must be from the CIA!
The Weird Inn
The “Weird Inn” or “The Nine Rooms Paradox” by Gath Brittle, which I discussed in my previous blog post, is another good example of a paradox poem resembling a riddle. Here’s the poem:
Ten weary, foot-sore travellers,
All in a woeful plight,
Sought shelter at a way-side inn
One dark and stormy night.“Nine rooms, no more,” the landlord said,
“Have I to offer you;
To each of eight a single bed,
But the ninth must serve for two.”A din arose. The troubled host
Could only scratch his head,
For of those tired men not two
Would occupy one bed.The puzzled host was soon at ease—
He was a clever man—
And so to please his guests devised
This most ingenious plan:In a room marked A two men he placed;
The third he lodged in B;
The fourth to C was then assigned;
The fifth retired to D;In E the sixth he tucked away,
In F the seventh man;
The eighth and ninth in G and H,
And then to A he ran,Wherein the host, as I have said,
Had laid two travellers by.
Then taking one—the tenth and last—
He lodged him safe in I.Nine single rooms—a room for each—
Were made to serve for ten;
And this it is that puzzles me,
And many wiser men.
If you like this poem and want to learn how to incorporate it into a card trick, I recommend you read What a Weird Inn! (if you haven’t already).
From Schoolyard to Stage
While researching the history of “Antigonish”, I was reminded of a similar nonsense poem that goes by various titles, including “One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night” and “Two Dead Boys”:
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead men got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
I first heard this poem in the school playground as a young boy. There are many regional variations of it. Here’s another version of it from the United States:
Ladies and Gentlemen, skinny and stout,
I’ll tell you a tale I know nothing about;
The admission is free, so pay at the door,
Now pull up a chair and sit on the floor.One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight;
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.A blind man came to watch fair play,
A mute man came to shout “Horray!”
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to stop those two dead boys.He lived on the corner in the middle of the block,
In a two-story house on a vacant lot;
A man with no legs came walking by,
and kicked the lawman in his thigh.He crashed through a wall without making a sound,
into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned;
The long black hearse came to cart him away,
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.I watched from the corner of the big round table,
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable;
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man, he saw it too.
This longer poem would be perfect as the introductory patter for a cabaret-style stage act. It combines tangle-talk—a playful way of speaking that uses deliberate inconsistencies—with the concept of a mock announcement. A similar contradictory speech is recorded in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren by Iona and Peter Opie, published in 1959. 3 Here’s the poem:
Ladies and jellyspoons,
I stand upon this speech to make a platform,
The train I arrived in has not yet come,
So I took a bus and walked.
I come before you to stand behind you
And tell you something
I know nothing about.
The book states that “One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night” was collected in twelve UK schools and recorded fifty years earlier with two additional lines:
One blind man to see fair play,
And two dumb men to shout hurray.
Many magical effects are inherently absurd—after all, why tear up a card only to restore it instantly? Performing such effects with equally paradoxical dialogue creates a delightful symmetry between what we say and what we do, even when neither makes logical sense!
Performing with Paradox Poems
Paradox poems can serve two primary purposes during a magical performance. First, they can be recited between magic tricks to add variety and depth to an act. However, a more advanced approach involves integrating a magic effect into your performance that enhances the poem’s delivery.
For example, the reversals and transformations in Roy Walton’s “Poetry in Motion” emphasise the whimsical and playful aspects of “Antigonish”. Alternatively, you could perform an effect inspired by spirit photography alongside the poem to lean into the rhyme’s more disturbing and sinister elements, enhancing the eerie tone of the piece.
Imagine handing a spectator a photo of an empty stairway and inviting her to examine it closely. Then, the photo is placed in an envelope and dropped into a small box with a pencil. As you recite the poem, you dramatically slam the box lid shut when you reach the line “...and please don’t slam the door!” This sudden action will surely startle your audience, making them focus on the box.
Once you’ve finished reciting the poem, the box is opened to reveal “Hello” (or some other message) scrawled in messy writing on the back of the envelope. Upon reexamining the photo, a shadowy figure of a man stands on the stairs (similar to the one in this blog post).
If you really want to creep people out, conclude the routine by turning to your participant and whispering, “He’s standing next to you!” while glancing wildly at the empty space next to them!
You could also recite “Antigonish” as a hook before performing your favourite version of the Haunted Deck.
Creating Your Own Paradox Poetry Magic
Instead of creating a magic trick based on an existing paradox poem, why not unleash your creativity and compose a paradox poem to match the plot of a magic trick? You can find inspiration in books like The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (a copy is available on the Internet Archive) and collections of poetry for this unique blend of poetry and magic.
Some magic tricks also naturally lend themselves to a paradox poem. Take, for instance, The Hotel Mystery plot, where a mixed packet of Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces is inexplicably resorted. This intriguing plot could be the perfect inspiration for a paradox poem, similar to the “Weird Inn”.
Final Thoughts
Magic, poetry, and puzzles form a powerful trinity because they all traffic in wonder and impossibility. Poetry gives voice to the inexplicable, puzzles challenge our assumptions about what’s possible, and magic brings impossible things to life before our very eyes. When combined thoughtfully, these elements create performances that engage audiences on multiple levels—intellectual, emotional, and wonder-inducing.
Whether you choose to perform “Antigonish” with your own magical interpretation, or craft original paradox poems for your favourite existing effects, remember that the goal is to enhance the sense of mystery, not just add rhyming prose to your presentation. The best magical poetry doesn’t just describe impossible things—it makes them feel real, if only for a moment.
So next time you’re working on a new routine, consider how a dash of paradoxical poetry might strengthen the impact of your magic.
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