Eratosphere - Spherian tips for better writing skills

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- - Spherian tips for better writing skills (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=23166)

Revise. Revise. Revise.

I'm with you on that, Catherine.
I never stop revising a poem, only, as the poet said, abandoning it, from time to time.

Take your poem to a counselor and really listen to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor (Post 325643)

Jerome - now you've done it - you've exposed me as a phoney Anglophile. Now the entire world knows that I completely forgot that shillings even existed. Be warned. Actions have consequences.

Shame on you, Michael! You'll be telling us next that you don't know how to do monetary arithmetic in pounds, shillings (twenty to the pound) and pence (twelve to the shilling), not forgetting the halfpennies and farthings (four to the penny).

Here's a handy guide.

And another (slightly more on-topic).

Thank you, Julie, for reaching out to the darkness in my soul. I will remember it forever.

Loved the Lupert poem, Julie.

Susan

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor (Post 325583)

I almost forgot one other precious reference - and one that I don't think exists today - at least not in good old paper and ink. I have a circa 1930 Walker's reverse Rhyming Dictionary, printed in the UK, which includes about 60,000 words, arranged in reverse alphabetical order, from baa to caaba ((sacred building at Mecca) to indaba (conference of Zulu chiefs), all the way to humbuzz (a cockchafer beetle, an apparatus to make a buzzing sound) and fuzz. I purchased it, already cracked and well thumbed, on Charing Cross Road in 1961 on my first visit to London (I envisioned myself as a poet forty years before I wrote a serious poem) - possibly in Fowles, but I don't remember. According to the fly leaf, I seem to have paid two pounds fifty for it. Or, hopefully (it's the romantic in me), two guineas fifty. Again, I don't remember. But it has been a delight ever since. and once I started writing poetry, a real help, since it contains so many more odd and unusual words than other rhyming dictionaries, and while you don't want to litter your poetry with words nobody has heard before, there are times when one is precisely le mot justificated.

About $70:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/041505...&robot_redir=1

Almost $0 to $60:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...guage&x=87&y=9

For code breaking purposes in the 1940s, the United States Army printed out a limited, early computer generated edition of all words in the best English dictionaries in reverse alphabetization. It is a huge resource in large format, capital-lettered, and easy to read, with space for private notes. It is no longer classified as secret, and I have consulted it several times in a state university library. Funny words, but, of course, without appropriate Army rhymes. (That is, apart from football terms.)

mm

Quote:

For code breaking purposes in the 1940s, the United States Army printed out a limited, early computer generated edition of all words in the best English dictionaries in reverse alphabetization. It is a huge resource in large format, capital-lettered, and easy to read, with space for private notes.

If that was the most sophisticated coding they could come up with, no wonder the Germans could crack the codes so easily. Lucky we had the Choctaws to save the cavalry. (I know the code-talkers did their first contributions in WW I, but they (and others) also made a huge contribution in WW II.

I don't think the Army project did more than serve as a warm-up to the mad anagrammers usw.