Is the moon the center of the universe? is a collection of mostly humorous verse rooted in an appreciation of the absurd and the ridiculous. A few of the verses take their cue from real persons, such as "The secret history of Duncan MacDougall", who hoped to prove the existence of the soul by weighing dying patients just before and just after death, or "Mad Anthony Wayne", a verse very loosely based on the life of an officer in the American Revolutionary...