Strunk and White and Seidel

After reading a long, unsparing piece on The Elements of Style this morning, I found myself hung up on a sentence in a long, reverent New York Times profile of the poet Frederick Seidel. The context for this sentence: whether poems ought to include references to expensive hotels and restaurants and rare motorcycles:

The poetic propriety of such inclusions has, by a certain kind of commentator, been questioned.

That's the sort of sentence to which Strunk and White's (overly simple) rules apply: "Use the active voice." "Keep related words together." Possible revisions:

Some critics think poems should not refer to such things.

Some critics think such things have no place in poetry.

Or if you want the alliteration (which to my ear sounds stilted):

Some critics have questioned the poetic propriety of such references.

I'm not sure what the fuss is about: poetry long ago made room for Achilles' shield, an object far grander than any motorcycle. The question is not whether motorcycles belong in a poem but whether the poem is good.

And if you're wondering: I'm no fan of Seidel's work, which I find, well, boring. (It's funny how quickly shocking turns boring.) Some years ago I turned down an invitation to review Seidel's My Tokyo (1993). I wish I had a copy of the letter I sent back, which quoted a few choice bits of the poems.

[This post is no. 24 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Two posts on The Elements of Style
Hardly [adverb] convincing [adjective]
Pullum on Strunk and White

All "How to improve writing" posts (via Pinboard)

Overheard

A manly man speaking:

"It's like 'I'm a full-blown human, and you're an eighteen-year-old girl. What do you know?'"

(Thanks, Rachel and Ben!)

Related reading
All "Overheard" posts

Inspector Bucket

[From "Dickens Gallery," a cigarette card series packaged with Cope's Cigarettes, n. d.]

Inspector Bucket speaks the above words in Chapter 24 of Bleak House (1853). Bucket has no first name and a wife whom we never see. These details and his genial, deceptively casual manner make him the precursor of another great detective, Lieutenant Columbo of the LAPD.

Dickens Gallery (New York Public Library Digital Gallery)

Today's Hi and Lois

Postcards from a field trip? Not plausible, though it sounds like a good poem title. Also not plausible in today's Hi and Lois is the way the background colors switch places. Really. No joke.

And that hedge — it's coming closer! Quick! Run!

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

"Iceburg Lettuce"

Does this name signal genetically modified food? Rich meaty taste? Nah. It's just a misspelling that, like hamburger-flavored lettuce, one doesn't expect to find in the grocery store.

[Seen at a friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart. Hyphen between genetically and modified removed in August 2020. Thanks, Lu.]

A related post
Debri

Two useful bookmarklets

What is a bookmarklet, exactly? It's "an applet, a small computer application, stored as the URL of a bookmark in a web browser or as a hyperlink on a web page." Thanks, Wikipedia. Here are two useful bookmarklets:

quietube removes the clutter from web videos.

Readability removes clutter from web pages. Also good for making clean PDFs or print versions of online materials. Readability seems to work best with pages displaying a single article or post.

These bookmarklets seem to me especially helpful in classroom settings, where one might want to look at a news item or film clip without the distractions of ads or viewer comments.

If you dislike displaying a bookmarks toolbar in your browser, you can save these bookmarklets as plain bookmarks. Call them up quickly when you're browsing by assigning keywords — for instance, qtube, read.

(found via Daring Fireball and 43 Folders Clips)

Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27

What is the end
to insects
that suck gummed
labels?

William Carlos Williams, from XII (later titled "Composition"), Spring and All (1923)

The glue on the above labels is untouched by insects, untouched by human tongues. These labels are from a box of forty-five Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27. I like the clear design, the white bands (shades of Pall Mall Famous Cigarettes), and the lower-case th. I wish I knew the typeface. I found these labels some years ago in a now-defunct stationery store.

[This post is the fourth in an occasional series, "From the Museum of Supplies." The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family's word, for all manner of stationery items.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads

"[S]ought for smell for dust for lace"

T's comment about the smell of books made me remember this poem by Gregory Corso:



Corso, like Percy Bysshe Shelley, is a poet of exclamatory, lofty energy. As you might already know, Corso's ashes are buried next to Shelley's in the Cimitero acattolico di Roma, the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome.

If you're wondering what a "cypressean skein" is, I am too. Corso's poem "Bomb" mentions "cypressean torches." But a skein? Corso, like Malcolm X, was a dictionary reader in prison.

I do know that I love the adjective steep (high, lofty) modifying book. O book!

A related post
Gregory Corso and words

Hi and Lois and hair

Now I understand Chip's strange appearance earlier this week: there must be a new stylist at work at Hi and Lois, so dedicated, so passionate, that he or she is working even in the interstice, as in today's strip, cutting, parting, shaping, volumizing. New looks! And new colors. Thirsty has always — always — had "blond" hair — that is, yellow.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

Smell of Books™

Too late for April 1, but still timely for nostalgists: Smell of Books™, "a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer."

When I've asked my students, digital natives all, what they think about the idea of reading on a Kindle, several have said that they would miss the smell of books. "What!" said I. "Are you from the nineteenth century or something?" They weren't joking, and they wouldn't budge.

Related posts
From the Doyle edition
No Kindle for me

(via The Daily Dish)