The following piece by Logan K. Young has been rejected three times because, as the author put it, “I simply cannot change the fifth word of the 15th bullet below…” We’re publishing it as part of an ongoing series replatforming censored and disappeared works.

Fifty-Two Ways of Looking at the Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter

1. A deep rolling bass.
2. More deliberate. Solemnly chanted.
3. A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket.
4. With a philosophic pause.
5. Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre.
6. Like the wind in the chimney.
7. All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy. Light accents very light. Last line whispered.
8. Rather shrill and high.
9. Read exactly as in first section.
10. Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas. Keep as light-footed as possible.
11. With pomposity.
12. With a great deliberation and ghostliness.
13. With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp.
14. With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm.
15. With a touch of negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end.
16. Slow philosophic calm.
17. Heavy bass. With a literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, an trance.
18. Exactly as in the first section. Begin with terror and power, end with joy.
19. Sung to the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.”
20. With growing deliberation and joy.
21. In a rather high key—as delicately as possible.
22. To the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.”
23. Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper.
24. To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune.
25. To be sung or read with great speed.
26. To be read or sung in a rolling bass, with some deliberation.
27. In an even, deliberate, narrative manner.
28. Like a train-caller in a Union Depot.
29. To be given very harshly, with a snapping explosiveness.
30. To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper.
31. Louder and louder, faster and faster.
32. In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation.
33. With a snapping explosiveness.
34. To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper.
35. To be brawled in the beginning with a snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant.
36. To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune as the first five lines.
37. This section beginning sonorously, ending in a languorous whisper.
38. To the same whispered tune as the Rachel-Jang song—but very slowly.
39. To be read, or chanted, with the heavy buzzing bass of fire-engines pumping.
40. In this passage the reading or chanting is shriller and higher.
41. To be read or chanted in a heavy bass.
42. Shriller and higher.
43. Heavy bass.
44. Bass, much slower.
45. To be read or sung slowly and softly, in the manner of lustful, insinuating music.
46. To be read or chanted slowly and softly in the manner of lustful insinuating music.
47. With a climax of whispered mourning.
48. Suddenly interrupting. To be read or sung in a heavy bass. First eight lines as harsh as possible. Then gradually musical and sonorous.
49. Sharply interrupting in a very high key.
50. Heavy bass.
51. To be intoned after the manner of a priestly service.
52. Interrupting very loudly for the last time.