Three Archy poems by Don Marquis
pete the parrot and shakespeare i got acquainted with a parrot named pete recently who is an interesting bird pete says he used to belong to the fellow that ran…
writing
The long course of civilization
“With the collapse of totalitarian empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind holocausts, genocides, invasions, and…
Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!
A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I…
What in Hell…?
Hades, you know, isn’t a place. It’s a guy. The Greek god of the underworld. His territory consists of a bunch of domains, including the rather unpleasant Tartarus, where souls…
Little Victor Update | Finally, he can fly
A few days ago Victor and Andrew, his older brother, were playing what was essentially ‘motionless tag’ in the living room. Basically it was Victor tapping Andrew’s shoulder, then yelling…
Putdownable books?
A recent article in The Independent said that J.K. Rowling’s new book and the abysmally-written 50 Shades of Grey were among the books most put down by readers as unfinishable.…
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
After reading the play by Shakespeare last week, I decided to tackle Chaucer’s epic 8,000-line poem about the Trojan lovers, Troilus and Cressida (or Criseyde as Chaucer writes it). It’s…
The History of Typography
In The Fridgularity, the emergent consciousness communicates to the protagonist (Blake Given) through text. Blake learns to read the mood of the consciousness (called Zathir) by pairing that emotional context…
Reading, Writing and Memory
“Memory,” he read the headline as he settled into the armchair, resting his elbows on the wide arms to expand the National Post paper to its fullest, “declines much slower…
The Decline in Media Credibility and Profitability
Last August the Pew research Center released the results of its latest study on how much the American public trusts the media. This has been part of an ongoing study…
The Zen of Proofreading
Sponsored post note: I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because my cybernetic monkey helpers were away at pirate camp. I remember a couple of things about my study…
Nosferadude
Vampire fiction was my education. It was all I was allowed to sink my teeth into when I was young. And when I was just a little boy, I loved…
Henry’s long ride with death
Henry rode with Death his entire life, but it never really cramped his style. For the most part, other people couldn’t see Death, hanging on his coat-tails wherever he went,…
Notes for a Spring Evening
Late spring, Saturday night, sitting here surrounded by the trees and garden in full bloom, everything lush and full of life, my view from the front porch of verdant trees…
Midway in our Life’s Journey…
So begins The Inferno, the first of the three books that comprise Dante’s magnificent and complex work, The Divine Comedy.* It’s a rich, complex and challenging read. I have to…
Blake meets Zathir [excerpt from The Fridgularity]
Author’s note: here’s another quick hit from The Fridgularity, which is still available for 99¢ in May. Not much needed to introduce this one, except to say that the…
Musing on Melville’s Poetry
I came across a poem last night that I had not read in the past (always a pleasant thing to discover something new in one of your books)*. It is…
Little Dorrit: BBC Drama
We just finished watching the 14-part BBC series of Little Dorrit. As usual with most BBC series, it was superbly cast, acted, paced and filmed. Each episode was a mere…
New projects, new horizons
Hello, all you phenomenal followers of Polygonic, who’ve put up with both my obtuse rants and my long, long silences with absolute aplomb. Your stamina and support bends my actual…
New projects, new horizons
Hello, all you phenomenal followers of Polygonic, who’ve put up with both my obtuse rants and my long, long silences with absolute aplomb. Your stamina and support bends my actual…