Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

PLOG

Posted on May 27, 2018 by JMN

PLOG – Poetry Log (Started 25 April 2011) These are the flags: Code Mauve, Code Beige, Code Gray. Code Mauve: I can understand the poem’s language and can make sense of what the language describes or asserts. This can produce … Continue reading →

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The creepiness of the creepy

Posted on May 24, 2018 by JMN

We become benumbed and resigned to it. Around 2011, it dawned on me that things I mentioned in personal emails, and the objects of my searches, would crop up in online advertisements. First I was mystified, then stupefied. My online … Continue reading →

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“To be invisible…”

Posted on May 23, 2018 by JMN

“To be invisible is to be forgotten… To be a symbol, and an effective symbol, you must be vividly and often seen.” (Walter Bagehot, quoted by Gary Younge in The Guardian.) What propels me, a mildly reticent recluse, to put … Continue reading →

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Happy Words

Posted on May 20, 2018 by JMN

A word is a terrible thing to lose. Rescued Words by Wallace Stevens: fubbed gobbet diaphanes pannicles carked rapey cantilena fiscs phylactery princox funest Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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Facing Facebook

Posted on May 19, 2018 by JMN

I haven’t deleted Facebook. That would amount to locking the door after the assassin has entered the house. I open FB in order to dismiss notifications. Then I quickly exit, like slamming a window shut to keep a hornet from … Continue reading →

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Make Intelligent Mistakes

Posted on May 19, 2018 by JMN

Make intelligent mistakes. (No idea who said this.) What interests me about rhyming is how it can force you to say something that you didn’t intend to say. It can make your poem go in a new direction. It may not … Continue reading →

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Untimely Splooge?

Posted on May 19, 2018 by JMN

As a twenty-something aspiring writer I felt I was duty bound to tilt at every convention I could locate, and to speak unvarnishedly about it. I had read Burroughs and Berryman and Updike. Regrettably, one redoubt I chose briefly to … Continue reading →

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The Snout

Posted on May 17, 2018 by JMN

The snout of a maintainer is a blunt piece of overstatement at the insect level. What’s not to love? No wonder so many movie monsters have been buggish. It’s cold comfort, yet assuaging, to reflect that when we mammals croak … Continue reading →

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Happy Words

Posted on May 17, 2018 by JMN

A ninja of the recondite… Queasy pudding… Codwalloping colossus… Like Puritans and Papists… In Shakespeare’s “King Henry IV, Part 2,” when the King says the rebels are fifty-thousand strong, Warwick gently chides him saying, “Rumour doth double, like the voice … Continue reading →

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Angry Words

Posted on May 17, 2018 by JMN

Quasi-Scatological Invective Chrestomathy Index Headwords — Skullduggery — Tomfoolery — Shutterbuggery — Heilraising — Pettifogging — Bunkerhunkering — Duckrupturing (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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