THE EARTH IS A SPACESHIP: Sabrina Ramet’s Wackiest, wittiest, and wildest verses

Sabrina P. Ramet
Scarith, 2020
192 Pages, 34 Illustrations by Christine M. Hassenstab
ISBN 978-1-7326988-8-8 Paperback

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About the Author

Sabrina P. Ramet is a Professor Emerita at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.  She is the author of 14 scholarly books and two novels, both published by Scarith Books:  Café Bombshell:  The International Brain Surgery Conspiracy (2008) and The Curse of the Aztec Dummy:  A Nebraskan Chronicle (2017).

Christine M. Hassenstab, who prepared the artwork for this volume, earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2010.  She was a public defender in a previous life.  She and Sabrina have a cat named Jascha, a calm and unusually friendly cat.

Praise

“What do Mao’s Cockroach, a stuffed Jeremy Bentham, an ode to a semi-colon, and a rabbit in someone’s brain all have in common? They all come from the wonderful and imaginative mind of Sabrina Ramet! The Earth is a Spaceship reprints some of Sabrina’s finest poetry from nearly 20 years of published verse, most of it in rhymed meter. This selection of hilarious poetry puts the world to right by posing the crucial question ‘Were Adam and Eve really married?’, and continuing with such verses as ‘You cannot be right against the party, or Trotsky agreed with himself’, and musings on the theme ‘If the mayor were a pigeon’. This collection brings together some of her material from her five previous collections of absurdist verse, demonstrating once again that Sabrina Ramet is nothing short of a comic genius.” —Dave Collins, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, NTNU.

“Ribald and irreverent, Sabrina P. Ramet’s new verse menagerie is a brilliant excursion into the depths of the absurd, with unexpected humor at every turn, as she romps through such subjects as religion, politics, world history, literature, and mental health.  The lyrics of this collection are in many cases set to popular music from the twentieth century. Personal favorites include “Church-run brothels” (based on actual historical fact) set to the tune of “Happy Days Are Here Again!” (“Church-run brothels in your town – / they banish sadness and your frown”), “The Mayan Calendar” sung to the tune of 1960s television program “Rawhide,” and—another favorite—an address by an unnamed ordinary citizen to his mother, “O mamma, are you a virgin?” sung as a blues song. This collection provoked abundant smiles and uncontrollable guffaws.” —David Hahn, composer of the opera Attack of the Trumpanzees and other musical works.