Colorless Green Ideas

In 1957, linguist Noam Chomsky invented a famous sentence that he claimed was grammatically incorrect but nonsensical: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." In 1985 Stanford University hosted a competition to make the sentence sensible via fewer than 100 words and 14 lines of verse. Here are some heroic entries, quite beautiful, furious, verdant, and somnolent.

It can only be the thought of verdure to come,
which prompts us in the autumn
to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable
matter covered by a brown
papery skin, and lovingly to plant
them and care for them. It is a marvel
to me that under this cover they are
labouring unseen at such a rate
within to give us the sudden awesome beauty
of spring flowering bulbs.
While winter reigns the earth reposes but these
colourless green ideas
sleep furiously.
C. M. Street

Behold the pent-up power of the winter tree;
Leafless it stands, in lifeless slumber.
Yet its very resting is revival and renewal:
Inside the dark gnarled world of trunk and roots,
Cradled in the chemistry of cell and sap,
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
In deep and dedicated doormancy,
Concentrating, conserving, constructing:
Knowing, by some ancient quantum law
Of chlorophyll and sun
That come the sudden surge of spring,
Dreams become reality, and ideas action.
Bryan O. Wright

Let us think on them, the Twelve Makers
Of myths, trailblazing quakers
Scourging earthshakers
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
Before their chrysalides open curiously
Anarchy burgeons spuriously
Order raises new seedlings in the world
By word and gun upheld
The scarlet banner is unfurled
The New Country appears
Man loosens his fears
The New Dawn nears
Recollect our first fathers
The good society in momentum gathers.
("recently discovered sonnet by Alexander Blok")
translated by Edward Black


The Winner:

Thus Adam's Eden-plot in far-off time:
Colour-rampant flowers, trees a myriad green;
Helped by God-bless'd wind and temp'rate clime.
The path to primate knowledge unforseen,
He sleeps in peace at eve with Eve.
One apple later, he looks curiously
At the gardens of dichromates, in whom
colourless green ideas sleep furiously
then rage for birth each morning, until doom
Brings rainbows they at last perceive.
D. A. H. Byatt