GranneBlog

A grammarian’s haiku

So my friend Carrie is helping me edit my latest book in progress, and we got into an email discussion about the way I write & the edits she made. She sent me this haiku, which I thought was great:
I cannot abide
a run-on sentence, ever.
Sentence fragment, yes.

Word of the day: Synecdoche
Weldon Kees, polymath
The escape [...]

Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, language & literature | No Comments »

Wordsworth’s “spots of time”

From Wordsworth’s The Prelude 12.208-218 (1805 edition):

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to [...]

Posted on January 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, language & literature | Comments Off

A programmer’s poem

From dive into mark:
First, the poem itself (there are many versions, this is just one):
< > ! * ' ' #
^ ” ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , system halted
In English, this reads:
waka waka bang splat tick tick [...]

Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, language & literature, weird | Comments Off

Another awful poet

Scotland’s worst poet, William Topaz McGonagall: From “The Tay Bridge Disaster”:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time. …
Or here’s a few lines from “Glasgow”:
And as for the statue of [...]

Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, on writing | Comments Off

She’s a poet and don’t know it

So I’m listening to Car Talk on NPR, hosted by Tom and Ray, AKA Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and this woman calls in, and she says this:
Well hello, Click and Clack,
My name’s Mary Mack,
And I’m from Portland, Oregon.

And I thought, my God, but that scans really well. Try it — her meter really [...]

Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, on writing, overheard | Comments Off

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