Dive in, splash around, skim and dip and spout about the latest quotations, metaphors, words and, of course, triologisms. You’ll feel better for it!
Poems for my family 006 – McGee
Inspired by a high altitude test flight, this dazzling poem has added poignancy because John Gillespie McGee (1922-41) died soon after in an air...
Signs of civilization
I liked Durrell's simple assessment of two building blocks of a recovering civilization after the ravages of war: a functioning post office and a...
No post and plenty of censorship
We don't know how lucky we are, having access to many forms of communication, electronic or postal, and being free of censorship. Here Stefan Zweig...
Let the colour dry
An insight into technique by a superb poet, using a wonderful metaphor. Time fixes colours, in words as in paints, and you should let your work dry...
And this is my epic…
Listening time: under 4 minutes.A marvelous account of a butcher bursting in to Lawrence Durrell's office during the short period after the war when...
A heart-pounding meeting
A charming first hand account of meeting the great Goethe, by the young German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, awe-struck but also reassured by the...
A quote to note
Drawing on thousands of sparkling, moving and inspiring quotations amassed during decades of attentive reading. To delight your mind and spirit and improve your presentations beyond belief.
One month or five years
Although I can't vouch for its accuracy, I liked this neat formula for deciding how long to spend getting to know a new country. Not surprisingly,...
A definition of an Englishman
Gideon is one of several delightful, exasperating, original characters who became friends with Lawrence Durrell during the two years he spent in...
Fine with wine
Gideon is one of a group of lively friends of Durrell during a wonderful two year stretch when the Brits administered the island of Rhodes after the...
Bad news down the toilet
A kindly act by a local girl helping Lawrence Durrell with his housekeeping during his idyllic two year stay on the island of Rhodes immediately...
Metaphorically speaking
More marvelous metaphors on Mondays … Monday, metaphor day.
The mind’s cheap tunes
A sharp way to capture the Groundhog Day repetition of pointlessly churning regrets and anxieties: like a jingle you can't get out of your mind even...
Cables like mating adders
Serpents coiling around each other is Seethaler's way of describing inch-thick twining cables stretched across swathes of sky.'Cables twenty-five...
Landscape like lace
A surprising description of the Mediterranean and its surrounding landscapes, resembling a collage of lace and sackcloth. 'For the Mediterranean is...
Open to the climbing sun
A lovely image conveying the age-old human yearning to be closer to God or heaven or some other source: a flower opening to the sun as it climbs the...
Triologisms
Bringing you pithy, evocative imagery in the form of three-legged microcosms of meaning. Updated on Tuesdays … Tuesday, triologism day! You’ll never see this day of the week in the same way again.
Headache-inducing explosions
Now you know why the Jesuits' stupendously lavish baroque churches needed all those gilded churrigueresque curlicues, to better serve a didactic...
Soft-palmed servants
How to spot an aristo in disguise and on the run? Check servants for implausibly soft hands. Dead give away. A superb summary of the topsy-turvy...
Faux-Tamerlane backdrop
A tribute to Budapest Zoo includes this description of the Elephants' House and the geographically incongruous background designed for it. But I'm...
Whey-faced neurasthenics
Surely a candidate for a Triologism Trophy? What a fun image, a perfect 19th century refined salon scene set in stark contrast to Winder's own home...
Lavender-flavoured comfits
Winder's witty and summary dismissal of the less interesting Haydn symphonies, cranked out for aristo-soirées. And isn't that a marvelous phrase:...
Drizzle-washed hamlet
Winder captures the moment when galleons, packed to the rafters with silver from the newly discovered and increasingly exploited south America,...
Words
Sharing words that sparkle, appeal, intrigue or otherwise grab me, including in other languages. And adoring alliteration, words are added on Wednesdays… Wednesday, word day. See you back here then.
Gulch it down
Mervyn Peake uses Rabelaisian vocabulary to describe the gargantuan appetites and appearance of Swelter, the castle cook in his Gormenghast trilogy....
Mummarella
You would know the 'true' octopus if you saw it, wouldn't you? Reading a book about Mediterranean seafood, Luiz learned that according to an...
Ullage of sunflower
Something about this word that you can roll around the mouth like a good swig of wine or cognac, the removal of which would result in its ullage in...
Cragfast
Stuck? In a tight corner? No going forward ... or back? Call yourself Cragfast. A sheep cornered on a crag, to starve in the absence of rescue....
Gummocks
This glorious word being no longer current, I invite you to revive it the next time someone does something daft or useless. Perhaps combine it...
A pippin but not an apple
I always knew the word pippin to be a type of apple, but then came across a reference to 'the expression of his pippin face'. According to the OED,...
I find it moving that no literary text is utterly original, no literary text is completely unique, that it stems from previous texts, built on quotations and misquotations, on the vocabularies fashioned by others and transformed through imagination and use. Writers must find consolation in the fact that there is no very first story and no last one. Our literature reaches further back than the beginnings of our memory permits us, and further into the future than our imagination allows us to conceive, but that must be the only barrier.
Source: Alberto Manguel, The City of Words, CBC Massey Lecture Series (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2007), p. 139
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