I’m profoundly inspired by great writing of all genres. I particularly like autobiography, history (fiction and non-fiction), satire, and science fantasy. I’m a bit of a poetry fan as wel and clever song lyrics.
Insightful opinion, comedy and satire make me think and see things differently and challenge my assumptions. Fantasy provides an escape and music, well music fills my heart. I love the way people use words and often read paragraphs several times just to relish their mastery of expression and think to myself, “I wish I’d said that”.
I thought I’d share a few of my word perfect favoutites.
Late last month, Merriam-Webster shared the news on Instagram that it’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition. Hats off to them, sincerely. But it is hard to convey how bizarre, to an almost comical degree, such a decree seems in terms of how language actually works. It is rather like announcing that it is now permissible for cats to meow.
John McWhorter, New York Times 7 March 24
This made me smile when I read it. It’s incredible how many column inches are devoted to the tranny of gramar and syntax — oh the agonies over whether to use the Oxford comma or not. I know there need to be rules, but … er … some rules were just made to be broken.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Four Quartets: “Burnt Norton” – T.S. Eliot
Down the passage we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
I love this exquisite articulation of the futility of acheing for things that never were. The unknown parallel universes of what might have been. T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets collection of poems were published in the early 1940s. Burnt Norton, the first, captures the poet’s belief that if we can’t change the past or the future, our full focus should be on how we experience the present, which in turn will shape the future. We’d more like call it ‘living in the now’, but where’s the poetic beauty in that? I prefer Eliot’s elegant, poignant take. And who hasn’t opened that door at some point?
Some random thoughts
