I have been hoping to see this video surface on the internet for years.

 I first saw this on television, in high school.  It may have been featured in the obits that the networks aired, when Jack Benny died in 1974.  The concert was in 1956, and was a fundrais… Read full post »

I did this once at Baby's R Us, with those stuffed toys that have a string to pull, to play a music box inside.  There were eight or nine of them, and I just pulled all of their strings at the same time.

 I used to be a composer, and this… Read full post »

In 2010 nearly all of my posts were personal.  So even though it was tough to start a post sometimes (drum fingers… pace… get some tea… drum fingers some more… try a line… no, that has no rhyme… pace…), once I’d started I was on my own. … Read full post »

My rhyming dictionary has an accent.

Now, I just want to be clear about something:  I use one.  I use it a lot.  The fact is, I need it.  It’s not a crutch, it’s a reference resource.

If I have a line I like, then the next question is, what rhymes… Read full post »

Why obscene?

I learned about limericks in the fourth grade.  And I was so struck by the closing line of one of them that it’s still with me, some 45 years later. I googled it.  Here is the limerick:

      There once was a lady named Lynn
    … Read full post »

There is something about the basic form of the limerick that gives it superhuman strength. 

By comparison, the sonnet is a poor, sickly stepchild: not a lot of us nowadays feel anxiety set in at the arrival of the volta, or know to expect the final couplet.  We may not… Read full post »

The limerick's meter is sticking in my craw.  Why anapestic?

Here's a quick review:

      dah dah DUM dah dah DUM dah dah DUM
      ("he conSIDered himSELF quite a RAKE")

Precise adherence is not required, on the first and last metrical foot.&nbs… Read full post »

I’ve been musing a lot lately on rhyme.

My son has only been reading for a year or so.  In school he works a lot with rhyming words.  He really enjoys this – it’s word play, at a very elementary level, like counting by twos, or tens.  And it’s play.  It&rsq… Read full post »

I used this word - it'd - twice tonight.

The word presents a challenge that current usage and typography just can't resolve, and that doesn't matter until you're trying to write it into an iambic foot: one syllable or two?  The answer is, both.  Either. 

It's a matter of stress. … Read full post »

I don’t really collect words, although I like them a lot.  And I’m not sure why it occurred to me one day to ask a silly sort of question of a friendly, talkative hairdresser in the south of France.

She did house calls.  Right there to your front door, she came… Read full post »

…or that, actually.  Over there on that other blog, over there in the top left-hand corner of this screen.

I never, ever considered myself a poet, especially when I was younger (I am past 50 now, so there’s ample younger behind me).  I was a composer for a while, but didn&rsquo… Read full post »

Working on my post tonight, this couplet came and went with no result:

         Were I to give relationship advice
        ('cause you know, I've been married once or twice)...

Too bad.  It was so promising.

  Read full post »

First, full disclosure, and properly cited sources: The contents of this little ditty are taken word-for-word from Charles Yoo's August 6 post.  I hope you enjoy it:

Zsa Zsa Gabor, Shiloh Jolie, Chris Brown,
The Pirate Bay, ground zero mosque, K-Town.
Fox News, John Mayer parks and recreati… Read full post »

I was surprised, then intrigued, and then challenged, by a comment to my Genesis I:1-3 post on July 27.  The comment was from Jeff Maehre:

“My constructive criticism would be that you paced the poem far too slowly, with a lot of ideas essentially repeated, or at least, continuing to spool… Read full post »

After my first marriage broke apart, it was difficult to express grief for a long time -- it was all tucked away behind anger.  From time to time, She would call on the phone, and we would have a predictable argument.  Really, like a Chinese menu: one from column A, one… Read full post »

I was a music major as an undergraduate, and went to conservatory some 17 years later, to study composition.  (Life is full of stops and starts.)

Music conservatory is an intoxicating place, and wealthy in international students.  Many arrived in the U.S. just in time for the academic year.… Read full post »

This is my first response to an Open Call.  My heart is all aflutter. I do hope you enjoy.     

1.What is your favorite word?  I hope this isn’t obnoxious, but the word is French: pantoufles.  (It must be properly pronounced to achieve the de/… Read full post »

Sunflowers gave me a challenge, in my post on May 5. I was supposed to be writing in iambic pentameter, and here was a flower in my back yard, that the kids helped plant, and it was an oddity in English – an insistent, unmoving dactyl.

Over the last… Read full post »

Has anyone actually READ this copy?  It's even better than the Dr. Brommer's Peppermint Soap label (this part really is real):

Hot summer day is about to,Open the wardrobe is not yet found love after another the right clothes? So, also waiting for? Immediate action bar!  Welc… Read full post »

Others on OS seem to have had a great deal of fun with this site (xtranormal).  So I went to try it out.  Et voila.