This is Plahm in greeting-card mode—a poem written to accompany an actual Christmas gift (two volumes of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia) for a couple he clearly adores. The piece operates as personal correspondence more than literary artifact, and its charm is entirely in its voice: warm, funny, self-deprecating, and unapologetically nerdy. The opening aphorism—”When you ask a foolish question, / wisdom is just a page turn away”—sets the tone: this is a poem that believes in books, in looking things up, in the physical act of turning pages. “Go look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls!” is both a catchphrase (echoing the old Laugh-In television show, where the encyclopedia was a recurring joke) and a genuine instruction—the poet hands people problems and solutions bound in the same spine. The gift recipients are christened “Adam & Eve— / Two united muses, / seekers of knowledge, / who know better.” The Genesis allusion is deliberate and affectionate: these are not the Adam and Eve who ate from the tree of knowledge and fell; these are an Adam and Eve who seek knowledge and rise. The “Hahaa” and “LMGTFY / I’m a nerd” are Plahm’s signature self-interruptions—the poem refuses to take itself more seriously than the occasion warrants. The instruction to “pull these two volumes out” when an ignorant guest visits transforms the encyclopedia from reference material into a weapon of polite correction, and the parenthetical “(Remind me.) / When— / I visit” is a self-roast: the poet includes himself among the ignorant guests who might need the books. The Die Hard footnote—”For the guest who asks, ‘Wait, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?’ (Volume D, page 247: Define: Christmas.)”—is the poem’s punchline and its most culturally specific joke, settling one of the internet’s favorite holiday debates with encyclopedia authority. The whole piece reads as what it is: a Christmas card from a man who loves words, loves his friends, and loves the idea that answers live inside books if you’re willing to turn the page.

A poem that succeeds entirely on voice and occasion rather than on formal ambition—and knows it. This is a Christmas card, not a symphony, and judging it by the wrong criteria would miss the point. What it does well, it does very well: the tone is pitch-perfect for a gift inscription, warm without being saccharine, funny without being dismissive, personal without being exclusive. The Laugh-In reference (Funk & Wagnalls was a running gag on the 1960s variety show) roots the poem in a specific generational humor that will land perfectly for the right audience and fly over the heads of anyone under fifty—which is fine, because the poem is written for two specific people, not a general readership. The “Adam & Eve” conceit is a smart touch: it elevates a Christmas gift from generic gesture to mythological compliment—these friends are the original seekers. The self-deprecating moments (“LMGTFY / I’m a nerd” and the parenthetical reminder to correct him too when he visits) prevent the poem from tipping into lecture mode; the poet is part of the joke, not above it. The Die Hard footnote is the poem’s strongest comic beat—solving a perennial pop-culture debate by citing an encyclopedia page number that almost certainly doesn’t exist is exactly the kind of authoritative nonsense that makes nerdy humor work. Where the poem is thinner is in its middle section, which reads more like a card inscription than a poem, and the “Hahaa” and “Love you, Dave” sections, while authentic to the occasion, don’t carry the weight of Plahm’s more crafted closings. But this is a poem whose job is to make two people smile on Christmas morning, and it does that job with evident love.