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!
Beware educated peasants
Naive readers may imagine that an ideology ostensibly serving the masses might have been glad to encounter an educated peasant. But no, György...
How to hide a poem (I)
The child in me has always been curious about secret ways to communicate or protect things. When we drive, I look for hidey-holes, conscious of an...
How to write in prison
This first-hand account by the Hungarian poet György Faludy (1910-2006) of how to procure writing materials in prison is all the more horrifying for...
Now, what shall I write?
The Hungarian poet György Faludy (1910-2006) decides what to write on the eve of his execution. In the event, he wasn't hanged in the morning as...
Letters burned (I)
It always saddens me to learn of letters burned or destroyed; including those we will never see because Jane Austen's sister destroyed them after...
What it takes to be an author
In my naivety, I thought you just had to write and publish a book to be an author, but apparently there's more to it than that, and I'm not sure I...
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.
Uncle, who are you?
A delightful exchange between the boy György Faludy, and a friend, or at least acquaintance, of his grandfather's. I loved the man's playfully...
Summer’s end
Just as you sense a sadness at the departing summer, the arrival of Goldmund brings a great waft of warm light and colour. One of the most...
A bulwark against brain-washing
Listening time: under 9 minutes.  Sadly, some things in the state of the world are driving me to spend more time thinking about how simple citizens...
Beware the sunset (especially if it’s beautiful)
A striking example of the tendency of totalitarian ideologies to corrupt the mind: no-one means what they say, nothing is as it seems, distrust...
Metaphorically speaking
More marvelous metaphors on Mondays … Monday, metaphor day.
A remembered voice
After losing her mother, a daughter recalls her voice and finds the memory catching at her heart the way bedstraw does. It's only a few years since...
Boughs uplifting
A novel simile for a gentle breeze soughing the branches until they rise and fall like waves. There was only the evening wind lifting the boughs,...
A predatory gaze
A penetrating gaze likened to the steadfast unblinking focus of an owl about to swoop for its targetted lunch. I had someone look at me like that...
Vaulting clouds
A description of a visit to the Lascaux Caves yields this celestial simile for a soaring natural roof. The first room, called the room of the bulls,...
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.
Death-haunted aubade
This triologism emerges from Seamus Heaney's imagining how Philip Larkin would have written The Divine Comedy, triggered by his reading of Larkin's...
Clay-floored foetor
This humble and humbling triologism is from Seamus Heaney's eloquent commentary on a moving poem by Derek Mahon, 'A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford',...
Perfect teeth
Something simply pearl-fect about these teeth, and a neat simile to describe the darting in and out of an endlessly worked toothpick. ... the...
Sea-raddled limestone
Unusual word and usage, 'raddled', and particularly as a simile for hard, grey, hole-riddled bread. God protect one's teeth. Some went on nibbling...
A fine wine
What a wonderful scene, a simple lunch washed down with a local wine the colour of molten amber, and intriguingly, 'pumice-bedded'. Savour another...
Sea-drenched wind
I re-discover this triologism as we emerge from days of rain-drenched wind, waking up to a lush-verdant garden and landscape.  I also like the...
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.
A deceit, a descent and a parliament
As you may know, I have a soft spot for imaginative collective nouns, and although I'd come across 'parliament' for owls, and love the whooshing...
Lauzengier
Lauzengier (also 'lauzenger') appears in the songs of French troubadours. Â An old Occitan word but surely one which it may be timely to pluck from...
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....
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. Â
Source: Alberto Manguel, The City of Words, CBC Massey Lecture Series (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2007), p. 139
Love writingredux.com? Â Enjoy our sister sites:
www.foolsareeverywhere.com  I   www.nuannaarpoq.com  I  www.spyderceleste.com  Â
© Beatrice Otto 2022 - design & content unless otherwise stated - all rights reserved
Â
Â