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A Man with a Slant Rhyme: Contemplating Ted Kooser
Among my early memories are verses from Mother Goose. The perfect rhymes stick with me, sometimes within lines (“Hay-foot, straw-foot”) and sometimes nailed down at the ends of lines (“Hickory, dickory, dock, / The mouse ran up the clock”). Sometimes the rhymes did not quite align: “This little piggy went to market, / This little piggy stayed home, / This little piggy had roast beef, / This little piggy had none.” I was told that I said to my mother, “‘home” and ‘none’ don’t rhyme.” “But look,” she said. “‘This little piggy’ repeats.Read More
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Odi et Amo
I’ve been reading with great delight the just-published first volume of Mark Twain’s Autobiography. About a hundred pages in, there is this wonderful description of the man who suckered Twain out of many thousands of dollars over a decade and a half by getting him to invest in a never-to-be-functional typesetting machine. I will remark, here, that James W.Read More