Graffiti quoting American poet Robert Frost in a stall of the TLC Building women's restroom, University of West Georgia - 12 April 2012
Sometimes wisdom reaches out and taps one on the shoulder when and where one least expects it. It’s probably safe to say that one of those times and places is when one is using a public restroom.
Poem: “The Secret Sits” by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Over the last couple weeks, my English 1101 classes have covered the short stories “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor. The freakish world in which O’Connor’s characters dwell disturbs many readers, but doesn’t seem to bother my current students in the least. This is a wonderful thing.
Last week, I gave a quiz on “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” excerpts from which you’ll find below. The students were aiming for correct answers—not witty answers—but managed to accomplish both.
The other day, I mentioned to my students that many people say they “hate” or “don’t get” poetry. What’s ironic, I noted, is that those same people then put their iPod earbuds back in their ears, or get in their cars and crank the stereos. Why?
They’re listening to poetry. Nothing more, nothing less. Continue reading
Scene: Elsinore Castle, Denmark. HAMLET, at center, in mourning attire.
[Flourish of trumpets for THE PLAYERS.]
HAMLET:
You are welcome, masters, welcome all! We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech!
1ST PLAYER:
What speech, my good lord? If I may ask—what is thy rhetorical aim? What seek’st thou to accomplish? We are mere Players—
Continue reading
An anachronism if ever there were one
Looking in the Stats section for this website, I was delighted to see “elizabethan hokey pokey” as the top (only!) search phrase leading people here. I posted it a couple weeks ago as it appeared on Historic LOLs, but it seems the sonnet was written by Jeff Brechlin and submitted to the 2003 Washington Post Style Invitational.
“Verily, I say, ’tis what it’s all about.”
Photo from Historic LOLs (I Can Has Cheezburger)
Posts like this make my day. Nearly anything can be made funny (or funnier) by rendering it in Elizabethan English.
Trevor Stone’s Elizabethan Curse Generator is probably the first website I ever visited. In 1996, I was working on a graduate Shakespeare project, and this site was among the handful of websites that my professor let the class use for research. Hey, it was 1996—back then, hardly more than a handful of websites existed at all.
Go to, thou waggish dizzy-eyed malkin, and visit thy curse generator!