Sitting Pretty in Equus Magazine

The 2017 September edition of Equus Magazine published my article "Sitting Pretty" about my Icelandic horse Blessi and Mitttens, the cat who wanted to learn how to ride.  Here's a quote from my story:

"Mittens seemed to enjoy her lead line rides on Blessi around the stable grounds.  From her lofty perch, she was out of reach of the barn dogs, who were polite but tended to crowd cats on the ground.  No self-respecting cat enjoys the constant butt sniffing involved in canine socialization."

Cry me a synecdoche or a Quiz on Trophes

Can you cry me a synecdoche?  Here's a quiz on trophes.

Greek Muse--photo from Wikipedia

1.   Giving human characteristics to animals, vegetables, minerals and other things
2.   Using a part to represent the whole enchalata
3.   Exaggerating big league
4.   Representing one thing by something that is associated with it
5.   Referring to one thing to represent another thing based on similarity
6.   Referring to one thing to basically an unlike thing usually using comparison words such as "like" "as" "so"
7.   Linking two contradictory words; usually found in government and the military
8.  Making somebody groan by word play that the originator usually thinks is funnier than the listener
9.  Understating for effect or to negate its opposite
10.  Revealing a truth in a witty, concise way



a. Metanyony,  b. Litote,   c. Synecdoche,   d. Pun,  e. Oxymoron,  f.  Hyperbole,  g., Simile
h., Metaphor    i.  Personification   j. Aphorism  

Depending on your score, here is how you rank in your knowledge of literary devices.

10         You are TS Elliot.
7 to 9     You are Sylvia Plath.
5 to 7     You are ee cummings.  
under 5  Pick your own poet name.  You win because who cares about these old Greek expressions. 

Answers:  1 i,   2 c,    3 f,   4  a,   5 g,  6 h,  7 e,  8 d   9 b  10 j
b.

Nick Tabor's Analysis of Yeat's "The Second Coming"

Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” is a metaphor made up of metaphors.  Nick Tabor in his article “No Slouch” in The Paris Review brilliantly analyzes the poem and documents the “widening gyre of heavy-handed allusions” to this poem.  He enumerates over 36 citations from political commentary to comic books to Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.  He argues that “…Yeats’s lines work outside their context because the word pairings are brilliant in and of themselves.” 

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/07/no-slouch/ 

Yeats "The Second Coming" Read by Tom O'Bedlam

Tom O'Bedlam reads WB Yeats "The Second Coming."  This poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War.  As an Irish poet, Yeats wrote this poem at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence from Great Britain.

Would Jane Austen Be Published Today

In my last posting about a video recording of Proust's famous memory evoked by a madeleine scene,
I speculated whether an agent or publisher would accept a Swann's manuscript if his name were removed and it were submitted for publication today. 

David Lassman, director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, UK, decided to try a similar experiment.  So using the name Alison Laydee, a version of Austen's pseudonym A Lady, he sent off slightly rewritten chapters of Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice to 18 British publishers.  His version of Pride and Prejudice, now titled First Impressions which was Austen's early name for the book, even included her original opening line "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."   He was rejected by all 18.  Only one publisher spotted the deception. 

"Only one person appeared to have spotted the deception, Alex Bowler, of Jonathan Cape. His reply read: "Thank-you for sending us the first two chapters of First Impressions; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along, of course, with a moment's laughter.
"I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter, and make sure that your opening pages don't too closely mimic that book's opening.""

Here's the link to Steven Morris' article in The Guardian:

The author and the Austen plot that exposed publishers' pride and prejudice