I will never forget the first time I saw someone playing slot machines on their own television. It was about five years ago, during Covid. I asked her if the site she was using was affiliated with a major casino, and if she knew what percentage of the money gambled was paid out in winnings.
My friend said that it was an offshore company that she didn’t know anything about and she wasn’t sure what the payoff rates were. I was flabbergasted that anyone would use their credit card to gamble when they had no assurance that it was a legitimate operation.
I tried to conceal my incredulity as I asked: “What reason do you have to believe that you have any chance of actually winning money?”
She said: “An influencer that me and my friends like recommended this site.” Apparently, that was good enough for her.
So What’s an Influencer?
According to my friend Gemini, an influencer is “an individual with the power to affect the purchasing decisions, opinions, or behaviors of others due to their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience.”
For marketers, finding the right influencer to endorse your product can be extremely lucrative. It’s common to hear people boast about ROIs of over $5 for every $1 spent.
Many influencers initially gained notoriety as actors, musicians, athletes, models, and television personalities like Selana Gomez, The Kardashians, Cardi B, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Amber Rose, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi.
Another group of influencers came into prominence as creators, people who develop high-quality content, such as blogs, memes, and videos.
Targeting Is the Key to Influencer Marketing
There are two main strategies for marketers when it comes to finding people who may be interested in purchasing the goods and services you have to offer:
Casting a wide net through traditional forms of media such as billboards and tv ads and hoping to entice a small percentage of that audience to buy your product.
Targeting people who may already be inclined to buy what you’re selling or people who are actively seeking what you have to offer through strategies like direct mail, inbound marketing, and influencer marketing.
Because targeting is a major component of influencer marketing, audience size is much less important than other factors, such as trust, connectedness, expertise, and authenticity.
For example, Ronaldo and Messi each have over half a billion Instagram followers, but they probably wouldn’t be a marketer’s first choice for endorsing beauty and skin care products.
In the early days of internet marketing, many marketers who were looking to cast a wide net became infatuated with the notion of going viral. The limited efficacy of this strategy became widely apparent after Evian launched its hugely popular Roller Babies campaign in 2009.
As marketer Luke Sullivan notes:
It’s no surprise their online video featuring diaper-wearing babies on rollerblades might produce 80 million views. But…Evian sales plummeted by 25 percent…Apparently, roller-skating babies have nothing to do with selling water (1).
According to author and fitness influencer Amanda Russell, viral “is a wildly empty metric….A social post can rack up huge numbers and still not drive any sort of meaningful action. A bunch of eyeballs does not equate to impact, and being the hot topic of conversation isn’t the same as being trustworthy” (2).
Amanda goes on to say: “People assume 10,000 followers are better than 1,000 followers…but it’s just not the case. It’s the loyalty, support and engagement of that following that matters most” (3).
According to Nate Jones, an executive for the Nex Gen practice of UTA Entertainment marketing, “zeroing in on micro-communities can be a more cost-effective and targeted strategy,” than “working with attention-grabbing social media stars such as Alix Earle, MrBeast or Kai Cenat” (4).
What Are People Looking for in an Influencer?
There are influencers for just about any type of interest or activity you can think of, including mommy bloggers, NASCAR dads, fishing aficionados, and beauty product vloggers. What people are looking for when they choose an influencer is:
Knowledge
Authenticity
Engaging content
Being an influencer doesn’t require credentialed authority in a particular field. That’s why “an influencer does not have to be an expert like a dermatologist to give skincare advice, as long as they are a consistent content creator about the topic of skincare.” (5)
Video Content Rules
Although blogging, making personal appearances, books sales, and other activities can all be an important part of the influencer’s toolkit, we’ve come to an age where video content rules, whether it appears on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Snapchat, or any other social media channel.
According to Atlantic Monthly contributor Derek Thompson, these days Everything Is Television.
By “television,” I am referring to something bigger than broadcast TV, the cable bundle, or Netflix….Social media has evolved from text to photo to video to streams of text, photo, and video, and finally, it seems to have reached a kind of settled end state, in which TikTok and Meta are trying to become the same thing: a screen showing hours and hours of video made by people we don’t know. (6)
by Richard W. Bray
Luke Sullivan. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads, p 191
Amanda Russell. The Influencer Code: How to Unlock the Power of Influencer Marketing, p 41,
Amanda Russell. The Influencer Code: How to Unlock the Power of Influencer Marketing, p 4
Gillian Follet. Why brands are turning to local leaders–not just social stars–the to build trust and connection, AdAge, August 1, 2025.
Holly Frew. New Research Unveils Key Strategies for influencer authenticity, Georgia State News Hub, February 20,2025
Derek Thompson. Everything Is Television. Derek Thompson dot org, October 10,2025
The universe is charged and wondrous Feel the force that floats among us Resist the anger hate and greed Only take the love you need
The spirit of the trees comes out at night Dogs and children see the hidden light
Dynasties will rise and fall Nothing's written on the wall Seeking truth out day by day We stagger on our wanting way
The spirit of the trees comes out at night Dogs and children see the hidden light
Every breath is blessed and free Share the joy and dignity Love and kindness never cease Live with hope and work for peace The spirit of the trees comes out at night Dogs and children see the hidden light
can we listen? can we talk? can we walk around the block? can we solve our problems with words instead of rocks? can we listen? can we talk? are we able to be free? can we plant a garden without a Poison Tree?
can we listen? can we talk? can we ever be certain it's not a big lie not the man behind the curtain?
can we listen? can we talk? can we walk around the block? can a man have an opinion without losing his job?
can we listen? can we talk? frustration festers below keep it out in the sun and let your flower grow
In slow sustained consistent vibration all over outside Tapping window, streaking roof, running down runnel and drain Waking a sense, once more, of all that lived outside of us! –Delmore Schwartz
All that lives outside us The Gift that grows and guides us An ocean and a windstorm And a flame
The sun that warms and feeds us Though it doesn't need us I'm pretty sure it loves us Just the same
Fade into what sustains us What bleeds and entertains us What drizzles from above us Down the drain
As a teacher, every year I had the privilege to be with a group of kids for nine and a half months. During that time, my number one objective was to do everything I could to strengthen and support families.
Parent conferences are scheduled early in the year, so teachers can meet all the parents and talk about our goals and address any concerns that the teacher or the parent may have.
One year, a mother told me during our parent conference that her daughter was really enjoying my class, and the mother was happy about this because the girl had some problems the previous year during third grade. I told the mother this shocked me because she was such a spectacular kid, very enthusiastic and a real joy to be around.
Anyhow, fourth grade was a grand success for this kid — she made all sorts of wonderful progress, socially and academically. The mother expressed gratitude every time I saw her.
A Knock on My Door
One morning near the end of the year, I got a knock on my door before school. It was the girl and her father, whom I had never met before. The girl was holding a gift.
The father said, “Mr. Bray, my wife and I would like to thank you for everything you did for our daughter this year.” I invited them in and told the father that it was my pleasure to be around his wonderful daughter every day.
I have never seen anything more beautiful than the love parents have for their children. Nothing I have ever accomplished on a professional level ever made me feel better than knowing that I played a small role in the life of this family. Like Ira Gershwin said, “They can’t take that away from me.”
She Called Me Gramma
There are some kids at an elementary who shine so bright that everybody knows their name — all the kids, all the teachers, and even the parents and volunteers. Liliana (not her real name) was one such student.
Liliana lived with her gramma, and she was always saying things like, “Gramma said this” and “Gramma did that.” One time I walked past Liliana’s desk as she was working on a project. She pointed at her work and said to me, “Gramma, look!” Then she raised her head and gave me and the class the funniest look I ever saw, as if to say, “Oh my God, I just called Mr. Bray Gramma.”
It was the longest sustained laugh I ever experienced in a classroom. I had to sit down because I was laughing so hard. I was actually very flattered because I knew she loved her gramma very much.
I'm at the tip of the top
There's a pep in my step
I got the hippity hop
Winning all of my bets
I’m hanging on a hope
Met a special sort of friend
I’m such a silly old dope
Am I falling again?
Gonna get a new start
I’m so happy I could scream
For the bounce in my heart
And the sparkle in my dreams
I’m hanging on a hope
Met a special sort of friend
I’m such a silly old dope
Am I falling again?
By Richard W. Bray
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
—Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
8 billion bodies
all collected
life is never
what’s expected
tell yourself
you’re not affected
but everything
is all connected
green and blue
it’s all we got
this lovely living
spinning spot
all condemned to
live the thought—
stuck together
like it or not
It takes fifty-seven lies
Just to get you outta bed
Lies are like a fungus
That grows inside your head
You need a journal to keep track of
All the lies you ever said
Once upon a time
There was a girl who loved you true
Now there’s someone in the mirror
But you swear it isn’t you
The lovely thoughts you’re thinking
And those ugly things you do
Your heart is black and rancid
And you can’t erase the stain
You got booze and you got pills
To protect you from the pain
An umbrella in a hurricane
Won’t keep away the rain
Your body and your soul
Are in a nasty civil war
You just keep on doing
Crazy things you did before
There’s gonna come a time
When you can’t take it anymore
You choked to death on love
That you were too afraid to give
On your tombstone it will say
That you had too much pride to live
Some folks choose to die
When it’s too frightful to forgive
The confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and desires, one’s illnesses and troubles; one goes about telling, with greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell. One confesses in public and private, to one’s parents, one’s educators, one’s doctor, to those one loves; one admits to oneself, in pleasure and in pain, things that would be impossible to tell anyone else, the things people write books about. One confesses — or is forced to confess.
—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One
We have the right to know what’s true
The deepest darkest dirty you
And all those nasty things you do
Every word you ever said
Every thought that’s in your head
And everything you do in bed
We’re everywhere — you won’t get far
You have to tell us who you are
The ugly, wicked, and bizarre
We goad, we taunt, we tease, we hound
We build you up — we tear you down
We have the right to watch you drown
We pillage hearts and ransack souls
We seek salvation in your skull
And pray your blood will make us whole
There are several reasons why Emily Dickinson does not inhabit her rightful position as the greatest writer our culture has yet produced—she sedulously avoided publicity in her own lifetime (“How dreary – to be – Somebody!”); a comprehensive scholarly edition of her poetry was not compiled until almost seventy years after her death (long after the cannon had been established); she is often celebrated for her winsome poems that find their way into the high school textbooks like “I Shall Not Live in Vain” which represent only a tiny fraction of her output; she wrote short poems. (There is an absurd bias among critics in favor of “epic” poetry). Finally, we cannot overlook the obvious fact that Emily Dickinson was a woman and most of our cannon-selectors have been men, many of whom no doubt shared Nathaniel Hawthorne’s contempt for that “mob of scribbling women”
Moreover, elevating Emily Dickinson to her rightful place atop the pantheon of American poets would call into question the singular supremacy of Walt Whitman. Whitman, who sees himself as the great champion of democracy, claims to “contain multitudes” in his writing, but he merely embodies mountains of self-regard:
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of
my own body,
or any part of it.
It is his intrepid endeavor to displace God with Self rather than the actual quality of his work which makes Whitman the darling so many humanist critics. As Alfred Kazin notes in God and the American Writer, for Whitman
There is no one supreme Deity, no hierarchy, no heaven. It is on earth and nowhere else that we live out the divine in ourselves to which we are called. We are as gods when we recognize all things as one. Spiritually, we are sovereign—entirely—thanks to our culture of freedom. As we dismiss whatever offends our own souls, so we can trust our own souls for knowledge of the infinite.
Like the self-deluded subjects who claim to see the Emperor’s New Clothes (and like the editors at Social Text who published Alan Sokal’s intentional gibberish) few critics today are able to discern this manifest truth—Walt Whitman is an overblown, narcissistic, self-worshipping buffoon. (“In all people I see myself.”) Of course, in so many ways, Whitman’s solipsism makes him precisely the national icon we deserve, particularly in the Age of Trump. (It is not at all surprising that Bill Clinton gave his girlfriend a copy of a book by Whitman, although we might have expected him to choose “Song of Myself” rather than Leaves of Grass.)
Walt Whitman’s poetry delivers much music but very little sense, irony, or wit. Despite his gargantuan reputation, the words of Whitman taken together hardly amount to a single metaphorical dead white blood cell inside the metaphorical pustule existing inside the metaphorical pimple on Emily Dickinson’s glorious metaphorical backside. Dickinson proves again and again that she is capable of saying more in fewer than thirty syllables than Whitman ever gets across in page after page of his rambling jingle jangle.
One of the wonders of Emily Dickinson’s capacious mind is her ability to entertain opposing thoughts. As Richard Wilbur notes in “Sumptuous Destitution,” his splendid 1959 article on Emily Dickinson, she is “not a philosopher.” This is precisely why she can embrace paradox in a manner that would be difficult for a philosopher, thus expanding our understanding of our bizarre universe.
In “Faith Is a Fine Invention,” for example, Dickinson seems to ridicule the tendency to cling to faith in our modern age.
“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see–
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Note the irony of calling faith (rather than the microscope) an invention. And what is it exactly that a gentleman can see? Evidence of an invisible God, perhaps? But she is also lampooning those whose superstitious faith prevents them from seeing what wonders science reveals. One is reminded of Christian Scientists who would deny their children medical attention on religious grounds.
In “I Never Saw a Moor,” however, Dickinson defends faith entirely for its own sake. If you will pardon the tautology, she knows because she knows.
I never saw a moor;
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a billow be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven.
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the checks were given.
Paradox is not a manifestation of reality; it is a consequence of the limitations of human perception. As Kurt Vonnegut notes in the novel Deadeye Dick, birth and death amount to the opening and closing of a “peephole.” Great poets enable us to slightly expand the boundaries of our peephole. That’s why my favorite philosophers are mostly poets.
So far the human episode has been a brief chapter in the story of life on Earth—about two hundred thousand years. That’s not very long compared to the dung beetles who feed on rhinoceros droppings, which are the hearty descendants of bugs that were frolicking in dinosaur poop at least forty million years ago. And sharks have been around for over 400 Million years.
Although it’s fun to fantasize about a time long ago when giant monsters roamed the earth, it’s much more painful to imagine a point in the future when Mother Nature says: “Time’s up, humans. You had your chance, but you blew it.” Indeed, as the poet Richard Wilbur notes, it’s almost impossible to imagine a future on this planet without us:
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The novel Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut describes a future where evolution has altered humanity beyond recognition. A million years hence, we have mutated into a furry, seal-like creature with flippers and a much smaller brain encased in a “streamlined skull.” Our future progeny is no longer equipped to build skyscrapers or compose Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. And these new creatures exhibit an immense moral superiority over modern-day humans because they lack the intellectual and physical tools to harm one another on a grand scale. Besides, “how could you ever hold somebody in bondage with nothing but your flippers and your mouth?”
According to the Ghost of Leon Trout, the narrator of Galapagos who witnesses the million-year transformation of our species, this reduction of endowment is all for the better because humans
back then had a brain weighing about three kilograms! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute.
Trout’s Ghost concludes that the human brain “is much too big to be practical.” A practical brain would never “divert” people from “the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinion.” The main business of life, of course, is survival and procreation. Yet by some freak of evolution, human beings are capable of so much more.
Trout’s Ghost laments how our “overelaborate nervous circuitry” is responsible “for the evils we [are] seeing or hearing about simply everywhere.” Furthermore, such self-inflicted horrors as war, famine, slavery, and genocide are “as purely a product of oversized brains as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
Trout’s ghost confides that, “A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race.” He also describes “the most diabolical aspect” of the oversized human brain:
They would tell their owners, in effect, “Here is a crazy thing we could actually do.”….And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it—have slaves fight each other to the death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on.”
Here’s another disadvantage to having too much brain power for our own good:
Big brains back then were not only capable of being cruel for the sake of cruelty. They could also feel all sorts of pain to which lower animals were entirely insensitive.
Today the “mass of mankind” is “quietly desperate” because “the infernal computers inside their skulls [are] incapable of idleness.” The constant din of thought inside our brains that people must bear is akin to having “Ghetto blasters inside our heads.” And there is
no shutting them down! Whether we had anything for them to do or not, they ran “All the time! And were they ever loud! Oh, God, were they ever loud.”
Like Brick in Tennessee in Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” humanity craves to hear a “click in the head” which renders life “peaceful.” In Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut suggests an evolutionary solution to the plight which ails us. And perhaps it is the most plausible solution. As Emily Dickinson notes
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul
As soon as Max sees me grab the leash, he goes into spasms of delight, jumping in the air and making little pirouettes. Joy. It’s not just for humans.
(I try not to say the word “walk” in front of Max unless I’m ready to take him for one. So in order not to tease him, I’ll say, “Maybe I’ll take Max for a ‘W-Word’ later this afternoon.”)
Like so many poets, Max is giddy for the natural world, and he cannot contain his enthusiasm for outside smells, sights, and sounds. And like Max, William Wordsworth began to cultivate his love of nature exploring “those few nooks to which my happy feet/ Were limited.”
Unlike so many human beings, however, Max is not overburdened by the demands of his quotidian existence. And I’m pretty sure he’s never given much thought to the meaning of life. It is therefore unlikely that Max could share with Mr. Wordsworth
That blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the things of life
But ecstasy also hurts. Wordsworth referred to such ecstatic moments as “spots of time.” Spots of time are often induced by nature, and as Sheldon W. Liebman explains, nature is “a domain in which the fundamental conditions of life are mixed, even paradoxical.” Ecstasy hurts because even in its thrall we realize that soon we will return to a world where
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
Once we get beyond joy “And all its dizzy raptures” we are once again confined to “The still, sad music of humanity”
In the poem “Hamlen Brook,” Richard Wilbur calls this phenomenon “joy’s trick.” (Collected Poems 115).
Confronted with the immense beauty of the natural world, Wilbur laments his inability to “drink all this”
Joy’s trick is to supply Dry lips with what can cool and slake, Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache Nothing can satisfy.
For his part, Robert Frost argues that “Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length” (Collected Poems 445).
There are many moments in Frost’s poetry when
We went from house to wood For change of solitude. (445)
And the trick for human beings is to appreciate this happy now on its own terms. Frost explains in “Two Look at Two” (283).
‘This must be all.’ It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
If it sounds country, man, that’s what it is; it’s a country song.
–Kris Kristofferson
A tautology is a grammatical construct; circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. The two phenomena are related but not identical.
A tautology is a sentence in which the conclusion is equivalent to its premise. In other words, in a tautology, the predicate can be surmised by reading the subject.
Here are some examples of tautologies:
My mother’s brother is my uncle.
Father Brown is a priest.
It is what it is.
A circular argument occurs when someone affirms her position simply by restating it in different terms. In other words, circular reasoning is an argument where the conclusion depends upon or is equivalent to its premise.
In a circular argument:
X is true because of Y.
and
Y is true because of X.
A circular argument is similar in structure to a tautology, but a circular argument includes causal reasoning (because, therefore, for this reason, etc.).
Here are some examples of circular reasoning:
My mom is terrific because she is wonderful.
People do what Dave tells; therefore, he is a great leader.
I slumbered beyond my assigned wakeup time; that’s why I overslept.
Lesson Evaluation: Explain why the following examples are tautologies, circular arguments, or neither.
Chris Rock is a hilarious comedian because he makes people laugh.
A bartender is a guy who listens to people talk all day.
It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner.
—Steven King (On Writing 147)
As Stephen King notes, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot” (145).
But many people don’t realize that writing is a craft to be mastered. They think it’s some sort of alchemy that mysteriously springs out of one’s experiences. That’s why some people who know very little about writing think they could produce a great memoir or an enticing novel. They love their fabulous lives so much. They are so glamorous, so amusing, and they know so many unique people—the book would practically write itself.
With the application of talent and much work, a great writer can reveal the beauty and complexity of a common experience. In his memoir A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin relives the train ride to and from Coney Island on a hot summer day:
It was from the El on its way to Coney Island that I caught my first full breath of the city in the open air. Groaning its way past a thousand old Brooklyn red fronts and tranquil awnings, that old train could never go slowly enough for me as I stood on the open platform between the cars, holding on to the gate. In the dead calm of noon, heat mists drifted around the rusty green spires of unknown churches; below, people seemed to kick their heels in the air just a moment before being swept from my sight. With each homey crásh-crásh crásh-crásh of the wheels against the rails, there would steal up at me along the bounding slopes of the awnings the nearness of all those streets in middle Brooklyn named after generals of the Revolutionary War. I tasted the sweetness of summer on every opening in my face. As we came back at night along the El again, the great reward of the long parched day, far better than any massed and arid beach, was the chance to stand up there between the cars, looking down on the quiet streets unrolling below me as we passed. The rusty iron cars ground against each other, protesting they might fall apart at each sharp turn. But in the steady crásh-crásh crásh-crásh there was a comforting homeward sound as the black cars rocked on the rails and more and more men and boys in open shirts came out on the top platform fiercely breathing the wind-changed damp air. In the summer night the city had an easy unstitched look—people sat on the corner watching the flies buzz around the street lamps, or at bedroom windows openly yawning as they stared past us (137-138).
First, notice the extreme paucity of adverbs.
I tell my students that nouns and verbs should do the heavy lifting. When you choose the right nouns and verbs, fewer adjective and adverbs are required.
For example, I could say “My landlord is a mean, ugly, tyrannical, bossy, gruesome, overbearing man.” Or I could simply say “My landlord is an ogre.” The appropriate noun eliminates the need for several adjectives.
And speaking of adjectives, notice how Kazin utilizes several noncordinate adjectives. Coordinate adjectives are parallel, modifying their nouns independently. That’s why we separate them with commas (big, bad John; new, green car). The effect of coordinate adjectives is cumulative; however, noncoordinate adjectives, when properly employed, multiply meaning into something new and beautiful: “first full breath” “rusty green spires” “long parched day” “rusty iron cars” “comforting homeward sound“ “wind-changed damp air” “easy unstitched look.” (Alfred Kazin’s beloved mother was a seamstress.)
I’ve affirmed the elegance of simple sentences. I will repeat myself: I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them. And simple sentences are even more beautiful when they are rare. Like a great jeweler, Kazin positions a gem in the middle of his creation: I tasted the sweetness of summer on every opening in my face.
Notice the strongest character in this paragraph, the anthropomorphized train: “protesting they might fall apart at each sharp turn” “Groaning its way past a thousand old Brooklyn red fronts and tranquil awnings.”
Finally, notice how Kazin plays upon the illusion that world itself is in motion: “people seemed to kick their heels in the air just a moment before being swept from my sight” “streets unrolling below me as we passed.”
#3 Number off students in to groups of three. (Larger groups will encourage social loafing. It’s better to have two pairs than one group of four.)
#4 Assign a character to each group. It’s ok for more than one group to do the same character.
Group 1—Marie Lazarre Kashpaw Group 2—Nector Kashpaw Group 3—Lulu Nanapush Lamartine Group 4—June Morrissey Group 5—Lipsha Morrissey Group 6—Albertine Johnson Group 7—Eli Kashpaw Group 8—Lyman Lamartine Group 9—Henry Lamartine Jr Group 10—Gerry Nanapush
#5 Each group uses the novel to generate answers to the following questions:
a) What are four nouns that describe your character?
Example: Nector Kashpaw–Leader, Philanderer, Father, Indian
(Discourage students from going for the easiest, least revealing answers, like man, person, citizen, mammal.)
b) What are four adjectives that describe your character?
c) Explain how two passages (include page numbers) reveal something about your character.
Example—Albertine Johnson
d) What are two things your character wants? (Kurt Vonnegut informs the aspiring novelist to make sure your characters want something, even if it is just a glass of water.)
Why are handwoven baskets so lovely? Because human beings have an inborn hunger for beauty. And just as it is impossible to separate the utilitarian function of handicraft from its artistic function, the inherent beauty of the sounds and rhythms of words cannot be severed from the practical application of language.
That’s why everyone who speaks is a poet.
Just as a canary cannot read music, speakers of English needn’t study linguistics in order to employ rhyme, rhythm, assonance, and alliteration in their everyday speech.
Instead of saying that the love smitten fellow is located
Underneath the elevated train tracks
Three-Syllable Words
We create poetry by collocating different types of words. And many of my favorite words have three syllables. (I have an unprovable theory that three-syllable words are the coolest words in the English language.)
There are three types of three-syllable words: Dactyls, Amphibrachs, and Anapests. Here are some examples:
Dactyl (The first syllable is stressed.)
Wonderful Beautiful Happily Musical Satisfy Halibut Excellent Matterhorn Saturday Popular
Amphibrach (The second syllable is stressed.)
Accepted
Regardless
Terrific
Amazement
Exhaustion
Persistent
Reunion
Electric
Horizon
Let’s start with the FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so). I’ll use this handy, easy-to-remember mnemonic device instead of a more technical term because some people refer to them as conjunctions (as in, Conjunction-junction, what’s your function?), some call them coordinators, while others use the term conjunctive coordinators. (Oh, those wild and crazy linguists. In England they’re called philologists. Is that cool, or what?)
FANBOYS are used to combine two simple sentences into one compound sentence. You’ll be relieved to discover that compound sentences are much easier to punctuate than those pesky complex sentences. All you have to do is replace the period with a comma, insert the appropriate FANBOY, and change the first letter of the second sentence from uppercase to lowercase.
Here are some examples:
I want to go out. My girlfriend wants to stay home.
becomes
I want to go out, but my girlfriend wants to stay home
Don’t hurt me. I am just the piano player.
becomes
Don’t hurt me, for I am just the piano player.
(I know this sounds a little goofy, but when for is employed as a FANBOY, it means because.)
I worked very hard. I should get a good grade.
becomes
I worked very hard, so I should get a good grade.
I studied all night. I got a “D” on the test.
becomes
I studied all night, yet I got a “D” on the test.
(But and yet can be used interchangeably.)
I love pizza. My best friend owns a pizzeria.
becomes
I love pizza, and my best friend owns a pizzeria.
(A note on and: By my crude estimation, only about half of the high school English teachers in Los Angeles County enforce the comma rule for compound sentences using the word and. Moreover, the comma is unnecessary when combining two simple sentences with the same subject. Thus, the following sentence requires no comma: I’m going to go out and buy a car.)
The following words are conjunctive adverbs: accordingly, also, besides, consequently, conversely, finally, furthermore, hence, however, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover, nevertheless, next, nonetheless, otherwise, similarly, still, subsequently, then, therefore, and thus.
Now repeat after me three times: FANBOYS are NOT conjunctive adverbs and they must never be utilized as such. More on that in a future post.
Quick lesson on combining simple sentences with FANBOYS:
#1 Share the above examples of simple sentences combined into compound sentences with your students.
#2 Number off students into groups of three.
#3 Instruct each group to compose eight pairs of simple sentences and then combine them into four compound sentences. (4+8=12)
#4 When groups have completed this task, they will show their work to the teacher who will put an asterisk next to one of the complound sentences.
#5 Students will copy the compound sentences along with the two simple sentences from which it was combined on the board.
#6 Teacher will review the sentences on the board as a whole-class activity.
As Dorothy Parker once said
To her boyfriend, “Fare thee well”
—Cole PorterJust One of Those Things
Years ago I was up late reading a poetry anthology when I came across a familiar passage from Wordsworth:
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
I put the book down and thought, “You poor, poor man.” I was briefly flooded with empathy for Lucy and her chronicler. And this sensation connected my life and my various heartaches and disappointments with the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. (Soon I remembered that the people about whom I was reading had been dead for over a century. I picked up my book and went on to the next poem.)
Reading The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker, a women who “wore [her] heart like a wet, red stain,” I am reminded of the sage* who informs us that “Happiness is a sad song” (10).
Although I’m no stranger to heartache and self-pity, Mrs. Parker obviously possesses, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, a heart not so airy as mine.
The sun’s gone dim, and
The moon’s turned black;
For I love him, and
He didn’t love back. (151)
Just about every human being who has ever lived has had a similar experience. But how many of us could condense so much feeling into eighteen beautifully collocated metrical syllables?
(A note on Light Verse: Kurt Vonnegut complained that critics mistook Science Fiction for a urinal, and that’s how I feel about this dismissive term often applied to rhymed poetry which possesses a healthy meter. Even when, for example, Phyllis McGinley writes of serious topics like nuclear annihilation, critics belittle such poetry by classifying it as light verse. This is why I am heartened by the growing presence of poets such as Mrs. Parker and Ogden Nash in the anthologies.)
Of course, the poetry of Dottie Parker would be a dreary place were it not for the courage she demonstrates by climbing back on that horse no matter how many times it throws her.
Better be left by twenty dears
Than lie in a loveless bed;
Better a loaf that’s wet with tears
Than cold, unsalted bread (134)
And the existential vivacity of the tender heart which continues to grab life by the horns for all its gusto is heroic indeed.
For contrition is hollow and wrathful,
And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
There was nothing more fun than a man! (172)
Perhaps not coincidentally, the tenacity of Mrs. Parker’s amorousness is matched (if not bested) by the ferocity of her malevolence.
Then if friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die. (70)
Dorothy Parker is a legendary hurler of insults who penned several composites of enmity which she calls “hate poems.” Here are some of her more artful derisions:
(Serious Thinkers) They talk about Humanity
As if they had just invented it; (224)
(Artists) They point out all the different colors in a sunset
As if they were trying to sell it to you; (236)
(Free Verse) They call it that
Because they have to give it away (237)
(Writers) They are always pulling manuscripts out of their pockets,
And asking you to tell them, honestly—is it too daring? (237)
(Tragedians) The Ones Who Made Shakespeare famous. (246)
(Psychoanalysts) Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,
And we can all be Jung together (263)
(Overwrought Dramaturgy) Of the Play That Makes You Think—
Makes you think you should have gone to the movies. (265)
(Married “Steppers-Out”) They show you how tall Junior is with one hand,
And try to guess your weight with the other. (359)
(Bohemians) People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man who solicits insurance! (120)
(Men) They’d alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired. (73)
(Past boyfriends) The lads I’ve met in Cupid’s deadlock
Were—shall we say—born out of wedlock. (147)
Creatures you’ll meet
Out on my street:
Goblins, vampires
Shrunken head buyers
Gargoyles, zombies
Brain-dead mummies
Giant spiders
Headless riders
Grimmer Reapers
Crawly creepers
Werewolves, Frank Stein
Are not friends mine
No joy for me
Just lost my key
Locked out, late night
Cold air, fresh fright
Who could this be?
Someone help me
It’s moved closer
I’m safe? No, sir
Mommy, save me
It might grave me
Neighbor Louise
With my spare keys
“Thank you!” I gush
Inside. Big rush
Robert J. Dutton, a nice little boy
For both his folks, a true pride and joy
He’s kind and helpful in all manner of chores
He does all the dishes and oils creaky doors
But young Robbie Dutton has one little flaw
So minor it’s hardly worth mentioning at all
Despite bribes and threats and forecasts of doom
Robert J. Dutton just won’t clean his room
As days and weeks and years passed by
Robert J. Dutton—this wonderful guy
Began to emit an unhealthy aroma
One kid who smelled it went into a coma
The source of this odor, of course, is his room
I’ll attempt to describe it with minimal gloom:
It’s fusty and musty and dusty and dank
Kids in Australia complain ’bout the stank
The haphazard pile of waste on the shelf
Could only be seen by a junkman as pelf
Green grimy grunge covers the floor
It oozed ‘cross the room and spilt out the door
The garbage and junk and offal and rubble
And gunk and debris are a great source of trouble
The litter and rubbish and refuse and trash
Threaten to cause the walls to collapse
Beneath it all (this hurts to explain!)
Are twelve frozen meals—or at least their remains
The walls are caked with much muck and mire
The strong methane fumes are a real risk of fire
When finally the neighbors couldn’t take any more
They called the police who didn’t wish to explore
The cavern of filth at the end of the hall
So Officer Murphy decided to call
Federal agents, all the great masters
Of famines and floods and natural disasters
Who red-tagged the house they would not dare enter
That haven of crud was smut’s epicenter
The room was declared off limits to all
The army reserve has been placed on call
The Duttons, of course, have all been sent packing
For raising a boy whose neatness was lacking
I won’t be there
To watch you grow
And share your life with you
I’ve given up
The right to know
About everything you do
I lost my chance
To be with you
And see you every day
To see you smile
And hear you cry
And learn from what you say
The memory
The times we had
Feel like a missing limb
I can’t get back
To where we were
I never will again
The poem’s meaning is evoked by the structure of words-as-sounds rather than by the structure of words-as-meanings. And the enhanced meaning, which we feel in any true poems, is a product, therefore, of the structure of the sounds.
–Poetry and Experience by Archibald MacLeish (23)
Scansion records units of rhythm, not units of sense
–All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing by Timothy Steele (530)
Vocabulary
Meter: The basic rhythmic structure of written and uttered words (not simply poetry)
Iamb: A unit of language consisting of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable, in that order.
I once began a lesson on meter to a group of eighth-graders by exaggerating (both verbally and bodily) the inherent iambic rhythms of the following lines of poetry:
“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Pegg-y Ann McKay
I have the measles and the mumps
A gash, a rash and purple bumps*
A girl in the class looked at me in utter recognition and blurted out,
“I get it:
I was happy that this student immediately picked up on the main point of my lesson, but I was really thrilled because her description of iambic poetry was, in my opinion, superior to the one that is commonly offered in textbooks, a depiction with a musical correlation which mimics a snare drum:
There is no boat to cross
From that ill-favored shore
To where the clashing reeds
Complete the works of war
Together with the grass,
And nesting birds, and weeds.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born a-gain
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
One Final Thought
…”scanning” a line is not a dramatic, or poetic reading of a line. Scanning a line is reading it in a special, more or less forced, way, to bring out the meter and any definite derivations or substitutions. Scanning will not bring out the other parts of the tension; it will tend to iron them out. On the other hand, a good dramatic, or poetic, reading will tend to bring out the tensions–but note well that in order to do this it must be careful not to override and completely kill the meter. When that is done, the tensions vanish. (Another reason why the meter must be observed is, of course, that if a line is truly metrical, a reading which actually destroys the meter can only be an incorrect reading–by dictionary and rhetorical standards.) A good dramatic reading is a much more delicate, difficult, and rewarding than a mere scanning. Yet the scanning has its justification, its use. We would argue that a good dramatic reading is possible only by a person who can also perform a scansion.
The Concept of Meter by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley
from The Structure of Verse, Edited by Harvey Gross (163-164)
Suggested Further Reading:
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry
The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky
Versification: A Short Introduction by James McAuley
Although it’s now the fashion for girls to shave down there
I’m pleading that you don’t remove that lovely patch of hair
Such cruel extirpation abuses all who care
For that glorious triangle beneath your underwear
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Keep your forest natural; neither prune nor mow
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Don’t shear off nature’s bounty, the flora down below
The benefits of bushes are aesthetic and tactile
And it’s also more hygienic to have a healthy pile
Of furry insulation and any normal guy’ll
Choose the feral beaver: hairy, happy, wild
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Keep your forest natural; neither prune nor mow
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Don’t shear off nature’s bounty, the flora down below
Originally I reckoned this was just a silly fad
How could anything Brazilian turn out to be so bad?
And how can I convince you that I’m not the only lad
Who prefers to see a female shaggy when unclad?
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Keep your forest natural; neither prune nor mow
Let your garden grow, sister, let your garden grow
Don’t shear off nature’s bounty, the flora down below
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