My phone’s autocorrect turns poem into
po em
as I type a social media post about the poems (about poetry!) I read today.
My blog’s autocorrect turns po into
P.O. as I type this now. Continue reading
Po em = Poem
Reply
Category Archives: Writing
Not yet morning
Dawn breaks sometime in the future.
For now, I lie awake, insistent thrum of traffic washing up against my window, one unseen bird calling out, anticipating the day.
“Do worms hear?” I wonder as this bird (whose call I do not recognize, somewhere between cardinal and crow) breaks the pre-dawn calm with a repeated cheep … cheep … cheep. Does the early bird go hungry if it doesn’t remain quiet?
History is made of stories
My grandmother had a ticket for the Titanic. Continue reading
Mixing memory with desire: Poetry and public schools
"April is the cruellest month, ..."
Nearly every year on April 1, I re-read T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” It’s one of my favorite poems, and while I pay homage to it by quoting and requoting lines from it in conversation year-round, I also like to sit down and read it through periodically. The opening line, quoted above, is of course why I choose April 1 for this pleasure. (Also, April is National Poetry Month, so there’s another reason, though not the one that drives me.)
God, I love Chicago!
I’m not the only one. Neil Steinberg does, too. So do a lot of other people—presumably including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who wrote of thinking to himself “God, I am in Chicago” after first arriving in the city for a visit at the age of 15.
Steinberg recounts that moment of Jackson’s among many other stories in his 2012 book You Were Never in Chicago, which I read recently and reviewed over at Escape into Life. It’s one of many memorable tales Steinberg brings to life in the book, which took me down memory lane—both as a journalist and as an adoptive Chicagoan—while also teaching me more about the history of the city I love.
Eliminate these 2 words to improve your writing
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -Mark Twain
I just stumbled upon a web page (truly stumbled upon, as in “Thanks, Stumble Upon, the social media network I almost never use but might start glancing at occasionally after this!”) with a Mark Twain quote so priceless that it inspired this post:
It’s not just the quote, though. The article on the Writers Write website, “45 Ways to avoid using the word ‘very,'” goes to the heart of one of my pet peeves. There are two words that I think writers should excise from their vocabulary, and one of them is in fact “very.” The other? “Thing.” Continue reading