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Monday, March 28, 2005

Word of the Day Does Wordplay


antanaclasis (ant-an-uh-KLAS-is) noun

A play on words in which a key word is repeated in a different,
often contrary, sense.

[From Greek antanaklasis (echo or reflection), from anti- (against) +
ana- + klasis (breaking or bending).]


This is one of those things like anaphora that makes me all tingly inside. Truth be told, I just really like repetition. There's something very primal about it, like an ancient drum beat and when it's done with sly, mischevious variation, all the better. Never let it be said that I'm not easy to please.

(This week's theme is also Negation, The More The Merrier, which I have a feeling may, more than not, land me in a lot of trouble with my Legal Brief. Oh, for the blithe, long-winded days of legalese...)

Monday, March 21, 2005

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?


- Gwendolyn Brooks

I read this poem in my seventh grade poetry class. It was the first to teach me that forms don't have to be formal and are in fact the better for it.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Overthought Whilst Studying Property on an Airplane



I should be a vampire lawyer. I like property law. I like the alleyway sneakiness of devising property to a sixth cousin thrice removed who will later be played by myself. I like biting people. I have old world charm. In short, could there be a better solution to my professional ambivalence?

Surely not.

Cue sinister laughter and a flash of fangs.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Land, Ho!


And so February ends, as usual, with a gasp, as if March has arrived just in the nick of time to save me from a blue-faced death. Stiffling, muffling, cold as Kelvin (not Kevin) February (although to be fair to this particular cycle of seasons, winter hasn't been nearly as cold as it could have been. Never let it be said that I am ungrateful for small mercies-- no wait, I'm still chilled and bitter). I feel like falling to my knees and kissing every little crocus sprout pushing up through the snow (dog pee notwithstanding), every bright spring print at Banana Republic.com (even the hideous ones that look like Little House on the Prarie meets Covent Gardens), every wan ray of sunshine that filters through my windows (reminding me in a flurry of dust motes that my token payment to Housekeeping in the form of Spring Cleaning is about to come due).

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- e.e. cummings

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