One of my specialties, a perennial favorite on my extensive resume of Expert Skills for Jobs No One Will Ever Offer Me, are puns so convoluted they require explanation. They usually spring into consciousness as a riddle, or a treasure hunt. When I start expounding on one of these beauties, anyone within earshot usually begins to wince, then develop involuntary facial tics, and finally glance desperately toward the nearest exit. And guess what, here comes another one....

Once upon a time, a prospective client contacted me in regard to titling her corporate Presidential Message with a "good title" that preferably tied-in to her name somehow. Her last name was Thompson, and my first thought was of Thomson's Gazelle (Gazella thomsoni), "the common gazelle of the East African plains":

http://hyperion.advanced.org/16645/wildlife/thomsons_gazelle.shtml

Though fleet of foot, the gazelle had to go. It just didn't have enough oomph for an Important Presidential Message. As I said, I prefer puns that need explaining, and this one was too obvious. I quickly provided Ms. Thompson with some acceptable titles so I could concentrate on my pun, which now had a life of it's own and was leading me inexorably to a story. I could feel it.

Consider yourself warned.

Being among other things a big fan of Indian vocal music, "Thomson's Ghazal" was born. And although this is a nice stretchy pun, there was an even more convoluted pun and mystery story yet to be revealed to me. A Ghazal, for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of listening to Najma or Jagit Signh, is a traditional Indian song form based on Urdu poetry dating back to seventh century Persia. Here is a more thorough definition, courtesy Eric Folsom:

The ghazal, many will tell you, is an ancient Persian form of verse. The OED notes that it is generally erotic in nature, limited in the number of stanzas, and uses a recurring rhyme. The western impression, dating back to the last century and earlier, is that ghazals celebrate love and wine, but it is interesting to discover that ghazals can be found today in modern pop music. The Indo-British singer known as Najma, for instance, uses a number of ghazals (in Hindi if my memory is correct) as the lyrics of her songs. They are quite haunting, long soft syllables with tabla and saxophone solos, and gist of the words amounts to no more than the usual hyperbole of love song lyrics. No Bacchanalia.
[ http://www.ahapoetry.com/ghazal.htm]

Then comes the real shocker, as Folsom writes in the next paragraph:

In the U.S. of course, people like Bly and Rich have been the catalysts for the emergence of the new English language form of the ghazal. In Canada, however, the catalyst was a transplanted Englishman named John Thompson. He lived at Wood Point, New Brunswick, not far from what may arguably be the most famous landscape in Canadian verse, the Tantramar Marshes near Fundy Bay. Thompson's writing was utterly unlike the Canadian classics by Bliss Carman and others. He wrote instead a kind of agonized nature and man poetry, a type of free verse akin to Galway Kinnell and Ted Hughes, and in the last years before his suicide he turned to the ghazal.

John Thompson. Thomson's gazelle. Thompson's Ghazal. No wonder he committed suicide. His great adopted art form is reduced to a cheap pun on the name of a fleet-footed African bovid beast when paired with his name. This realization must have been devastating to him - just imagine being introduced at swanky literary teas as the "swiftest hollow-horned ruminant of Canadian verse." There's a lost Tennessee Williams play in here somewhere. Of course, "Fundy Bay" is also rife with potential.

And that's how an Extreme Pun™ is born, or excavated, straight from the belly of a lugubrious gazelle mired in the Tantramar Marshes crooning epic love poems beneath a Canadian moon.

If you're still breathing, and you crave more egregious assaults upon the English language, then check out the site I co-founded and edit, WordLab [http://www.wordlab.com], where "Puns" is only one of 40 categories of original names, slang, titles and slogans. There is also a great bulletin board, the WordBoard, where you can post your own name/slogan needs, offer suggestions to others, or just rant about language. You can even exact sweet revenge with your own punmanship exorcises. Follow your Bliss, Carmen.