The Purple Cow

Here is a poem that is absolutely, triumphantly about nothing. First published in 1895 in The Lark magazine, "The Purple Cow" consists of four lines that defy logic, reject meaning, and accomplish precisely nothing, except become the most quoted poem in twentieth-century America, beat only by "The Night Before Christmas." Gelett Burgess wrote pure whimsy, and somehow it became embedded in the national consciousness. The poem's defiance of explanation, its cheerful commitment to irrationality, felt like freedom. Burgess later wrote a confession: he'd never seen a purple cow, never hoped to see one, but would rather see one than be one, a perfect absurd distillation of preferring experience to existence. The poem was anthologized endlessly and passed orally from parent to child for decades, often without credit, because it felt like it belonged to everyone. It endures not because it means something, but because it doesn't, and that, somehow, is everything.