Spin and Rinse

Jaya Savige. latecomers. "West end".

I want it to stop here where it began.

this gentle aphasia
washes over us like fabric softener.

I don't want to follow the simile into a full-blown conceit. But I read on implanting the two lines like senyru in the laundry like coins forgotten in a pocket. Like the glitch of language tumbled dry. It never shrinks.

And so for day 2124
06.10.2012

Or Words to That Effect

The fate of a text by F.R. Scott, "W.L.M.K."

I was led to the library copy because I saw multiplied across the WWW citations containing the same error ("oderly decontrol"). The library copy netted another accidental ("conscription is necessary") which one reader corrected in the Robarts Library copy with a big fat F in blue ink which is closer to the popular conditional.

[The "is" is silently corrected to "if" in online versions that netted "oderly decontrol".]

Further research reveals that the often cited phrase "conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription" reverses the syntax of what William Lyon Mackenzie King uttered in much more compact and clipped phrasing:

"Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary"

But there is space in the popular imagination for poetic liberties.

And so for day 1944
09.04.2012

Erudite Attributions of Quality

The Quotable Oscar Wilde by Sheridan Morley renders this with two instances of "very"

I have very simple tastes, I am always satisfied with the very best.

I have seen a similar sentiment attributed to Winston Churchill: "I am easily satisfied with the best."

Apparently the source for the Wilde text doesn't have the double (or any) "very". 1917, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression by Edgar Saltus, Quote Page 20, Brothers of the Book, Chicago. To wit: "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

I derive this information from the ever resourceful Quote Investigator (Garson O’Toole). http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/03/simplest-tastes/#note-4945-1 who also enlightens us on the matter of the reference to (not by) Churchill: "Winston Churchill was associated with a similar statement, but he did not say the words himself. Instead, the comment was reportedly made by the British statesman F. E. Smith who used it when describing Churchill’s tastes."

Our thanks for the very best of investigations. [And the opportunity to snidely correct those that would impute to the great Oscar the double "very" which so cheapens the sentiment not to mention the marks of taste.]

And so for day 1896
21.02.2012

Braking Break

waves, their sonority.

Via Marcus McCann adapting some lines (quoting with variation), I took to looking at Mark Doty "Notebook/To Lucien Freud/On the Veil" collected in School of the Arts first appeared in the London Review of Books (Vol. 27 No. 2 · 20 January 2005).

         aspects of flesh breaking here,

the way we say waves break —
     become visible at the instant
         of their descent.

"the way we say waves break —"

becomes in Marcus McCann's "Three" in softwhere

the way. We say waves break,


McCann has an ear for assonance and alliteration. He often builds a set of lines from repeated and related sounds.

pleasure — libido, fluorescent
heart of an onion — in
the way. We say waves break,

The image of the onion and the allusion to layer upon layer influences the appropriation of the Doty lines. The punctuation brings prominence to the pronoun (not to be unexpected in a poem entitled "Three" which is in part describing a menage à trois); "we" becomes a kernel where once it was part of the waves of way and say. The italic emphasis on break is lost, the whole line becomes emphasized and enmeshed in enjambement: the break broken away.

And so for day 1166
21.02.2010