California, Mississippi
 North and South Dakota.
 New York, Jersey, Mexico and
 Hampshire, Minnesota.
 Vermont, Wisconsin, Oregon,
 Connecticut and Maine.
 Hawaii, Georgia, Maryland.
 Virginia (West and plain).
 Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas,
 Illinois, Alaska.
 Colorado, Utah, Florida,
 Delaware, Nebraska.
 the Carolinas (North and South).
 Missouri, Idaho.
 Plus Alabama, Washington,
 And Indiana, O-
 Klahoma. Also Iowa,
 Arkansas, Montana,
 Pennsylvania, Arizona,
 And Louisiana.
 Ohio, Massachusetts, and
 Nevada, Michigan,
 Rhode Island, and Wyoming. That
 Makes forty-nine. You win
 As soon as you say ____________.

It should come as no surprise that I loved this poem. “Someday, Someone…” is an unabashed piece of playful ingenuity that does for the states what Lehrer did
for the Elements [Poem #490], and I loved it for the same reasons - the sheer satisfaction of seeing a hodgepodge list of names organised into a neat series of rhymes, and the pleasure of the rhymes themselves. Not to mention a vicarious thrill at the cleverness of it all.

This is, indeed, more puzzle than poetry, a puzzle that Viorst does a brilliant job of solving. Indeed, the brilliance is twofold, for first she had to formulate the puzzle, to ask herself “would it be possible to…?”. The twist at the end was wonderful too, even if it did cause me to spend a good fifteen minutes staring at the list and eliminating states in a scattershot manner (yes, I did solve it. No, I’m not going to spoil the answer :))

— Martin

p.s. Some of you will doubtless be amused that my first thought on reading line 8 was “West Virginia and just Virginia”. I apologise to everyone else :)

p.p.s. If anyone knows of other poems in a similar vein, please do send them in.

Links

Biography: http://www.annonline.com/interviews/980112/biography.html

AAP site: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=62