Vladimir Mylnikov: Sacco
and Vanzetti was the name of the most popular factory in the Soviet Union.
They were making pencils. I believe it still exists.
JM: So, powder/red
wop indicates "explosives" and "red anarchists" (Sacco and Vanzetti
and, originally, Boyle's Italians "with out passports" ie wop).
The added touch of "pencil" must have tickled VN!
I see a coincidence operating in
the separate, but somehow connected, Nab-L themes (petards and
powder).
Btw: Hoist is sufficiently common not to warrant a
link bt. Shade's sentence in PF's methods of composition and Shakespeare, I
suppose. But, since the theme is still fresh in my mind after exploring
feisty petards, here are the two elements: The self-depreciatory "poetesque" is
striking. If we add to it Shakespeare's innuendoes, the poetesque is a bomb that
explodes in the hand of the anarchist.
Pale
Fire: Or is the process deeper with no
desk/To prop the false and hoist the
poetesque?
Shakespeare: For 'tis the sport to have the engineer/ Hoist with
his own petard, an't shall go hard/But I will delve one yard below their
mines/And blow them at the moon.
Hamlet III.iv ll.
202–09