This Halloween, dress like a poet or make your pet do it for you

The Academy of American Poets offers a not-that-tongue-in-cheek guide to dressing up like a famous poet. Like the William Carlos Williams one, and it would be easy to put together on short notice.

Elsewhere in Halloween, the New Yorker had a literary-figure costume contest for pets, which is where this hard-boiled Sam Spade came from. I also appreciated Cat Humbert Humbert and Turtle Kurt Vonnegut.

I don't have any pets and I wouldn't even be dressing up at all this year, but my office is having a contest and the organizers are worth humoring. I probably won't be going as a book character because I always end up explaining it when I could be mainlining candy pumpkins; my ideas are grand but my execution is flawed. I did think about looking for a Doctor Manhattan bodysuit, since WATCHMEN costumes appear to be more popular than the movie was, but the effect would be ruined if I then had to put my own clothing over it to make it work-decent. ("So you're giant and blue... and wearing women's pants...")