Archive for the Writing Category

Le Poem (April 2, 2012)

Posted in Writing on April 2, 2012 by e-ssay.org

Each vowel grips the laboring oar with two hands; Each consonant shoulders two buckets of water.

No word can be added; No word can be subtracted; No word can be changed.

No word to add;  “       “    “   subtract;  “       “    “   change.

Add no word; Subtract “  “ ; Change  “  “ .

[See the “e-ssay” titled ”Peak Land”: The Exodus Toward The Equator . . . or the North Pole? (April 4, 2011)” that includes among the “Bumper stickers of the week”:

A half dozen six-word memoirs in an “e-poem” titled “Take only pictures; Leave only footprints.”

Many live humans; Few dead dinosaurs.

Disregard the e-con-omists; Regard the physicists.

Change your attitude; Range the latitudes.

Pay old bills*; Develop new skills.

Consume less junk; Savor more beauty.

So many challenges; So little time.

*          Craft your own financial game plan.  With hyperinflation on the way, purposefully delaying the payment of bills allows one to pay obligations with significantly devalued dollars.  That is the strategy being pursued by the governments.] 

Bumper stickers of the week:

April – National Poetry Month

Be curious; Ask questions; Stay young.

Isabella Rossellini – a two word poem (in Italian)

Writing The Long Song (September 26, 2011)

Posted in Journalism, Language, Society, Writing on September 26, 2011 by e-ssay.org

. . .

2          “So you’re suggesting that Bill Shakespeare is sleeping off a bender on someone’s davenport.  We just need to give him a few more hours to resurface.”

1          “Bill is dead.  And alive.  In a way.  Mortal and immortal.  Not breathing but still singing.”

. . .

2          “So you say that a jour-nalist doesn’t quite achieve immortality, yet a jour-nalist adds, like, seven years to the actuarials.”

1          “As long as they don’t drink and smoke.  Jour-nalists contribute too.”

2          “Could they just drink or just smoke?  They are jour-nalists, they do need a smoke or an adult beverage or two.  Or at least a bad habit or two.”

. . .

2          “What if you write for a weekly or a monthly?  What if you are more than a jour-nalist yet less that a novelist?”

. . .

1          “The grim reaper has been on the back swing since we skidded across the maternity room floor.  Yet, the good song can reverberate long after we sign off and move on.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

“After publication of [Magnum Opus], [Celebrated Writer] achieved immortality for all time and died seventeen years later.”

“Unknown during his life, [Writer’s] three unpublished manuscripts found among his papers three years after his death establish his immortality among his peers.”

Mortality does stink; immortality would stink.

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