Tag Archives: language

Right On! New Directions in Doggerel

Posted on October 13, 2025 by JMN

With its loping equine cadence, amphibrachic tetrameter holds morbid fascination for the doggerel-besotted. No one knows what it is until they hear it. Then they go, “Oh yeah. There once was a girl from Nantucket.” But they’re wrong, that’s only … Continue reading →

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A Poem Is a Sketch

Posted on October 9, 2025 by JMN

Disconcert. Defamiliarize. Distort. Disrupt. Draw, Stardust! A friend I’ll nickname Stardust, avid prose reader, has remarked that relatively few people have a taste for poetry nowadays. I surmise it’s always been so, even in this or that era when <name-your-Great-Poet> … Continue reading →

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Inwardness, Tenderness, Political Rage

Posted on October 6, 2025 by JMN

***“I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. Poet covers it all for me… I want to do justice to my inwardness, my tenderness, my political rage.” (Tony Harrison)*** ***… como una mosca espía…… like a fly on the wall… [“a spy fly”!](From “Revuelo” … Continue reading →

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‘Tirdy-Tree and One-Tird % of the Land Is Trilled, the Other Two-Tirds Not So Much’

Posted on October 4, 2025 by JMN

My title is a headline from the Bulletin of the Apico-Dental Voiceless Fricative Foundation. “Many tink current trends are a trowback to the Tirties.” (Dr. Thurgood Thackery, A-DVFF President) c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Orison for Rubble

Posted on October 1, 2025 by JMN

Depending on whether I’m going or returning, not long before or after my crossings of the mighty, tea-dark Brazos near the Arredondo bridge, I pass what appears to be a Christian church whose name has kerygma in it.  For a … Continue reading →

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Sean Singer and ‘Bird’

Posted on September 29, 2025 by JMN

Often as not a poem gives me a right old drubbing while stealing my lunch money, cackling in cold delight all the while. Instead of picking up my Big Chief tablet, shrugging and slinking back to class, I squeal like … Continue reading →

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‘Sheathed in Fetters’ or ‘Bound in Chains’?

Posted on September 26, 2025 by JMN

Afterthought foregrounded: This will go down as a wildly utopian, presumptuous, naive, impractical proposition. Imagine a world in which the devout were schooled from an early age to read the foundational scriptures of their respective creeds in the original languages … Continue reading →

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Azurea20: ‘Permit Me a Space Wherein to Hang My Voice’

Posted on September 22, 2025 by JMN

“I personally learned my own craft of writing poetry through translating poetry… I think one way to deepen the appreciation of poetry is to approach it through translation.” (Arthur Sze, new U.S. poet laureate) “Señora de las Cosas Errantes” by … Continue reading →

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Samatar Elmi Got There Before Me

Posted on September 19, 2025 by JMN

“We’re planning a way to allow wide swaths of the world to elect representatives to a new governance board… Because if I weren’t in on this I’d be, like, ‘Why do these fuckers get to decide what happens to me?’” … Continue reading →

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A Song Is Worth a Thousand Explanations? Depends on the Singer.

Posted on September 15, 2025 by JMN

“Explaining things is a dry way of communicating,” Islam said. “I’m in my best element when I’m actually singing my heart out.” (Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens) I reproach myself by saying it’s a ludicrous form of callousness to feel … Continue reading →

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