Line 627:  The great Starover Blue

Presumably, permission from Prof. Blue was obtained but even so the plunging of a real person, no matter how sportive and willing, into an invented milieu where he is made to perform in accordance with the invention, strikes one as a singularly tasteless device, especially since other real-life characters, except members of the family, or course, are pseudonymized in the poem.

This name, no doubt, is the most tempting.  The star over the blue eminently suits an astronomer though actually neither his first nor second name bears any relation to the celestial vault:  the first was given him in memory of his grandfather, a Russian starover (accented, incidentally, on the ultima), that is, Old Believer (member of a schismatic sect), name Sinyavin, from siniy, Russ. “blue.”  This Sinyavin migrated from Saratov to Seattle and begot a son who eventually changed his name to Blue and married Stella Lazurchik, an Americanized Kashube.  So it goes.  Honest Starover Blue will probably be surprised by the epithet bestowed upon him by a jesting Shade.  The writer feels moved to pay here a small tribute to the amicable old freak, adored by every body on the campus and nicknamed by the students Colonel Star-bottle, evidently because of his exceptionally convivial habits.  After all, there were other great men in our poet’s entourage—for example, that distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nattochdag.