They detected the sun is around less and they all went,"erp!" All at once. They drink less, grow less enthusiastically, bolt. They're hanging on for the rest. It was cold as heck last night and I bet the birds felt that too. The doors are left wide open and I'm totally feeling it with the birds. Shivering cold. Fly South birds! Fly like the
Just fly.
"flower" is a favorite crossword clue. They'll go, flower of France, and you'll go, fleur de lis and that won't fit and you think of other french flowers like lavender and mustard, you'll try to recall what struck you when you drove through France but nothing will fit then you realize they mean flow-er, they're asking the name of a river.
20 comments:
damnit, this changed my fleur de lis to flour de lis or something and I typed that twice and I cannot edit it.
Oh, yes I can.
Chip, you poet, love this post.
It made me think of this strangely perverse nature poem by Robert Frost, "Spring Pools":
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods---
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
I don't think I've ever actually done a crossword puzzle but I recall a high school English teacher telling us that "adz" is a word often used.
He also said that you should guess Shakespeare or the Bible if you have to guess the origin of a quotation and you're stumped.
That was way back in 1977 or so, but even then, it seemed like some fairly bad advice.
Perhaps he was making a joke that only English teachers think is funny.
Wingstem gets going soon, to be replaced by goldenrod in the curious yellow brigade.
Then the day glo purple ironweeds and asters, the latter having given us public flower libraries.
When the world was much newer, and man had but a few words, did he love them, those words, as much as we do?
Were there ancient crossword puzzles on cave walls, or in Babylon's gardens, or in Egyptian graves?
When did love of language become a thing-in-itself?
Or has it always been so, that art expressed in each age by its own measure?
Most seem to say, like the cave handprint, I was here. Not a bad message. Everyone gets it. And thus we're linked across centuries.
What was the earliest poetry? Gilgamesh? And which came first, poetry or song?
I wonder what is going beep beep beep beep every hour or so.
Mysteries of modern household devices.
Pogo, I think probably right off. I know ancient Egyptians loved puns, their written language fairly demanded a skill in it. And that skill demanded to sound things out and write it divided classes so the use of language became a thing that divided the classes. You can imagine a man enlisted into the military, that is they go around each year following the regular flood looking for able-bodied young men working the fields and take them, exposed for the first time to elites in the military using the exact same language in a completely different way, finding themselves being spoken about and laughed at without knowing what is so funny.
Is there any record or thesis or other scholarly work that establishes the seminal use of the word 'Nantucket' in poetry?
St. Paul wasn't enough to cover the poetic needs of the time.
Re: "I wonder what is going beep beep beep beep every hour or so."
That's Me. Betamax3000 is Everywhere.
Althouse I can food
Two instant comments.
1. Don't use parentheses. Just put it in the same voice. No need to invoke a sock puppet voice.
2. Nature is from natus, pp of nascere, to be born. I'd prefer to call it gnature, reverting to the classic form.
Natus as in adeste fidelis.
Incidentally the Oh Come All Ye Faithful could use another stanza with the rockets red glare.
"beep beep beep beep every hour or so"
Sounds like the swan song of a smoke detector with a fading battery.
They beep beep beep to let you know they are dying, but not frequently enough to pinpoint their location.
Althouse The Verb Opt
Ignorant is actually i-gnorant, one of those great Greek gn words like pregnant.
Also fun : helico-pter, a-mnesia.
If somebody says that ignorant is racist, as Althouse wonders, just say that it's from gnoscere, to know.
Interesting. I never realized 'opt' was one of those horrid verbed nouns. And coined by Frederick Douglass no less.
So 'deflower' could be a clue for a dam?
Chip,is there anything more boring than a crossword that doesn't have sly clues? The kind that make you go 'ha' when you get them?
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