More fun with grammar curmudgeonry

This peeve is the one that's probably dearest to my heart because it's* so pervasive.

Bob the Angry Flower on "its" vs. "it's"

* correct usage :-P

My new favorite pastime

(Poetry aside, of course.)

FreeRice.com

I posted this on my other blog, but it bears repeating. A fun little word game that boosts your vocabulary while contributing to U.N. food donations to help end world hunger.

Don't you just love the English language?

Well, in fact, I do, despite (or perhaps, in some perverse way, because) of its vagaries of pronunciation.

And speaking of English, there's a bunch of these out there, but I thought this amateur (very amateur :) production of Beowulf was cute, but perhaps not as high in production values as the new film with Angelina Jolie as Grendel's avenging mama.

Quote: Arundhati Roy

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

-- Arundhati Roy

Uneasy Rhymes

"Hellish" and "relish."
Will keep in mind for my next sonnet (although it seems to call for a limerick.)

OK, so, yeah, I was having a really bad week. But now that the weekend's here, I feel quite un-hellish. Quite good, actually.

Last night I started the first phase of planning for an online lit journal, something I've been mulling over for about a year (and thinking about in a "someday" way for much longer.) Will take a while to get it off the ground... generating interest for quality submissions will probably be the hardest/most expensive part -- how much is a classified in Poet's and Writers? -- but it's fun to think about.

Poet's Mantra

It's probably no accident that, among recent Western adherents of Buddhism, a large number are writers or artists. The bare-bones psychology of Buddhism is a lot like the artist's (ideal) way of being. Mindfulness might be translated as very rigorous observation.

My artist's mantra would be that, wherever I am at the moment, I would aim to be perfectly there, perfectly hot or cold, but keeping what some Buddhists call the Buddha in the Center. An artist might just call this the observer, taking notes, equally serving art itself and the sanity of the artist.

And in the Western tradition, Socrates, in probably his most famous line, had high praise for the value of observation as well.

I think it was the personal credo of the poet Anthony Hecht, whom I've been reading for class, regarding the crucial role of faithful observation in the life and work of a poet, who inspired these musings.

I met Hecht when he was a guest in the first course I took in the writing program. He signed my book (well, everyone's book.) I was feeling callow and nervous, aside from my usual shyness, and hadn't been able to come up with a perfect question to ask him, as the instructor had requested (well, he hadn't said "perfect," but I had hoped to impose that requirement on myself and failed miserably.) I think it was after he read from a poem of his about Flannery O'Connor, watching the trees through the window as she was lying in bed dying of lupus, that I scrapped whatever I had come up with and managed instead an off-the-cuff but heartfelt question that included the word "rigor." His eyes sort of flashed for a moment and he said, emphatically, "Yes."

It was a moment of hope for me, even though thus far I had produced nothing satisfactory at the level I was aspiring to, that I might have an inkling of what it was all about, and therefore something to guide me and to hold onto. And it was indeed a rocky road from the first couple workshops until these last two, so that hope was a valuable gift. He died later that same year, and I felt so lucky to have had that opportunity, even though I hadn't been ready for it.

P.S. And some belated good news: That habit of submission which I mentioned earlier (of poems to lit journals... what did you think I meant? ;) has paid off with some actual publications. Some rejections, too, but, so far, in fairly equal measure, so it's definitely been worth the effort... sending some more stuff out today.)

What is Poetry? P.2

Here are the rest of my definitions from the summer workshop's recurring assignment (including a few alternates I didn't submit):

Poetry is the jargon of the subconscious.

Poetry is nothing but if's, and's and but's.

Poetry is an oasis made of sand.

Poetry is reality's halfway house.

Sometimes poetry has to be mined deep in an underground shaft; sometimes it flows over like lava at your feet.

Poetry is the alchemy of language from experience.

This semester I'm taking a course on Poetics, so I'll probably have to come up with some more.