Stan Carey of the Sentence First blog and the MacMillan blog and sundry other lingusitic habitats is holding a limerick competition – yeah! – and there are some really great ones there, don’t miss them. Deadline: September 21st.
My contributions are a bit dour for limericks, but such is the life of an English teacher:
Krashen wrote [...]
Gil Scott Heron (1 April 1949 – 27 May 2011) – good profile on Wikipedia. Thanks to Ann Walsh for the link to this, a quieter, more personal side to the angry granddaddy of rap.
Gil Scott-Heron: Where Did The Night Go?
Long ago the clock washed midnight away
Bringing the dawn
Oh God, I must be dreaming
Time to [...]
In a week we’ll be burying my mother’s ashes on Drummond. We’ve decided to read some of her poems, with a translation into English. She published a volume of them in the Wilhelm Andermann Verlag in Vienna in 1944 when she was 21; a miracle, since paper was so rare towards the end of the [...]
Ian James presented a lovely recording tool, Vocaroo, on his blog, and I’ll be using it in online courses. But here on this blog, dear reader, it’s an easy way to record yourself and to practice your pronunciation. Listen to my recording to help with the more difficult words. Then record yourself (you might have [...]
Recipe For Happiness
Khaborovsk Or Anyplace
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
One fine day.
I wonder about the meaning of the last line. What do you think: Is today a very fine day [...]
Absolutely beautiful: The title of Natalie Merchant’s new album Leave Your Sleep is taken from a Mother Goose rhyme:
“Girls and boys, come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
and come with your playfellows into the street.”
In the booklet that introduces the two-disk album, she writes,
“This collection [...]
Forgotten Language
by Shel Silverstein
Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying flake [...]
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