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The "News & Notes" section of the latest Entertainment Weekly (May 1, 2015) features "Six Secrets from the Set of Avengers " with the subtitle "What do Emily Dickinson, Gollum, and old-school romance have to do with Avengers: Age of Ultron ? More than you think." A page later, we get the following bit of trivia: Swapping Poets for Puppets [James] Spader was sold on [Joss] Whedon's script when Ultron referenced the so-called Moth of Amherst. "It was an eight-foot robot, and in one of the scenes he was quoting Emily Dickinson," Spader says. "I got more and more excited." Whedon confirms that Ultron did have an unhealthy obsession with Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," but it was ultimately replaced with the Pinocchio song "I've Got No Strings." "You know, creative [advertising] was very angry when that got cut," Whedon jokes. "They were like, 'What's the in ...

When " mega-selling poet " Rod McKuen died at age 81 on January 29 of this year, the P&PC Office found itself at a complete and utter loss. What could we say in memoriam for the best-selling, critically-maligned poet and cat lover (pictured here) who published over thirty volumes, who wrote more than 1500 songs, and whose books, according to the Associated Press, sold more than 65 million copies—over one million in 1968 alone, when, according to the Huffington Post , McKuen also released four poetry collections, eight songbooks, the soundtracks to Miss Jean Brodie and A Boy Named Charlie Brown , and at least ten other albums? Born in a charity hospital , McKuen ran away from home at age eleven to escape an abusive alcoholic father. He did a lot of odd jobs and hung out with and read alongside the Beats in San Francisco. He appeared in three films. He won a Best Spoken Word Grammy for Lonesome Cities in 1968. He was endorsed by W.H. Auden, who said , "Rod McKuen...