My log with notes to myself, links, reminders, pics and more was getting quite full, so to clear some of it out, I've posted ten miscellaneous items below.
1.
Back at the end of February, I shared a post which included Michael Corballis’s 1999 article, “The Gestural Origins of Language: Human language may have evolved from manual gestures, which survive today as a 'behavioral fossil' coupled to speech.” Related to that, I came across a Reels the other day; though the conversation centers on dogs’ abilities related to inferential reasoning, the video also touches on how one-year old children “begin to understand pointing” – “when the foundations of language and culture begin to develop.” The video is HERE,
2.
Back in December, I published a post which included Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro,” thought to be the origin of imagism and verbless poetry. The other day I came across this Reels about the poem, HERE.
3.The other day I saw a clip from an interview with Rita Dove where she was asked, “Are there any poets that come to mind where you think there’s not a syllable that could be changed?” When I did not hear her mention Emily Dickinson, I was about to post a comment. Then I saw this:  | 4.For all of you logophiles out there, here’s a 2015 article from TheWeek.com entitled, “15 pairs of words that seem etymologically related but aren't,” subtitled, “There's no bomb in bombast”; HERE.  |
5.
Here’s another Reels, “50 poems no English Literature student can afford to ignore” – and yes, I watched to make sure Dickinson was represented – and yes, as expected – Dickinson was there. #9 was “Because I could not stop for Death” and #50 was “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” So the only real surprise for me was that Dickinson was on the list just twice! LOL!
6.
Speaking of “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” check out this jewelry ad from the New York Times’ Styles section last December. I received from Nancy Friedman of wordworking.com (and on Substack too: https://fritinancy.substack.com/)
7.
| I’ve been writing about Frost for the past several days – particularly about his first published poem, “My Butterfly,” a poem which Lawrence Thompson claimed was inspired "by a moment which had occurred late in the fall of his few months at Dartmouth, a moment when he had found a fragile butterfly wing lying among dead leaves.’” An interesting article I found – from 1959, when Frost was 85 years old – recounts Frost’s “days of harum-scarum, collegiate activity” during his short time at Dartmouth. Interestingly, that line with “harum-scarum” called to mind Dickinson’s letter to her friend George Gould – written when she was 19 years old – which was ultimately published in the Amherst College student newspaper. The letter begins, “Magnum bonum, ‘harum scarum,’ zounds et zounds, et war alarum, man reformam, life perfectum, mundum changum, all things flarum?” |  |
8.
I stumbled upon this poem the other day, HERE. It has nothing to do with Dickinson, except that it called to mind her quote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
9.I found another article entitled “The Road Taken, Amherst College,” written by William Perverill (known as Pepa BIll), a graduate of Amherst College. Scroll down to page 9, and there’s a bit (entitled) “THE BELLE AND BARD OF AMHERST” – about Dickinson and Frost. However, the article begins, “Emily Dickinson was one of the ‘indispensable’ poets in English, one of two great American poets of the nineteenth century and almost undisputedly America's greatest female poet.” ALMOST? Come on, Pepa Bill. The article is HERE. | 10.A fortune from a cookie I consumed recently:  In a letter to a friend, Dickinson wrote, “the strongest friends of the soul - BOOKS.” |
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