Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America is taking part in the Project Muse Subscribe to Open pilot, and the subscription threshold has been passed! This means that this year's issues will be fully open-access online at no cost to authors.
Post deleted. These language types <s>are</s> were ruthless.
it *was* impossible to talk about
The (historical-chronological) present time includes some past time, and probably some future time. So can the (grammatical) present tense, but not in the same way.
A dictionary is having a time/tense problem and it's making linguistics Busky anxious.
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.
David-Antoine Williams reviews books about dictionaries
thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/two-dictiona...
perseverative. And also, sure, playful and mischievous. "Incantata" likes to rhyme Beckett against himself (Acacacac-, quaquaqua, Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq). "Near Izium" (which has Ukraine front and center) gets away with "Putin"/"Biden" (cat/dog type antirhyme).
two yarrowrhyme poems are "The Triumph" (from Howdie-Skelp) and "Near Izium" (from Joy in Service). "The Triumph" is in terza yarrow-rima, while "Near Izium" has an idiosyncratic couplet-tercet patterning. These were never, "exploded sestinas" (pace and imho) but something else ruminative and
the "Yarrow" rhyming template. Last time I joked that though Muldoon can't quite rhyme "cat" and "dog", he could rhyme "cat" and "god", and now he's gone and done it, in "Frolic and Detour" (though in the original we do find "God" and "gatto", not to mention "Kattegat", so-). The other
I've now published v.2 of "Yarrowrhyme, or, Paul Muldoon's Soundprint", a reference guide to the ninety rhymes of Yarrow and twelve other poems". This updated document adds three poems and ~500 lines to the now close to 4,000 (!) expressions of
thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/yarrowrhyme/
Quick mention of two worthwhile books for the dictionary crowd, and the poetry crowd, and the sexuality crowd.
thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/two-dictiona...
7/ and, importantly, the consonants themselves admit variations, especially in voicing, so that:
coulter→gelder
truck→drag
Baba→Papae
These are all true Muldoonian yarrowrhymes, and the reason why "cat" and "dog" don't rhyme, but "cat" and "god" do!
6/ vowel nucleuses. But it's more complicated in Muldoon, since consonants can travel, both in clusters and across them. So for instance the template KLTR is realized in the yarrowrhyme poems in various ways, including the most basic:
coulter→kilter→culture
but also:
kilter→clitoris→Killeter→clatter
5/ forms, including couplets, octaves, italian sonnets, and terza rima. The predominant rhyming convention is pararhyme, also called consonantal rhyme. That's when "cat" and "cut" rhyme, or "fact" and "fucked", i.e. the terminal syllables match CXC, with identical onsets and codas, and variable ..
4/ of Muldoon's capacious rhyming grammar (and vocabulary). To give a sense of the scale of the yarrowrhyme poems, to 2018 they counted over 3200 lines, with 3400 rhyme-words, all generated from 90 syllabic templates. The poems themselves are in a variety of conventional, adapted, and suigeneris ..
3/ Muldoon can rhyme "cat" and "dog" suggests a heroic rhyming power, and also an element of the unnatural, and also the sense that any syllable, seemingly, can produce a deluge of rhyming pairs. In yarrowrhyme, you can't rhyme "cat" and "dog", but you /can/ rhyme "cat" and "god", because ..
2/ this is still a productive template -- given the length and complexity -- and seemingly entrenching its early associations with elegy and sorrow. The elements of virtuosity are themselves worth parsing out, and for me anyway the payoff of the exercise. The hyperbole that ..
1/ Getting ready to update my accounting of Paul Muldoon's yarrowrhyme [/Paul Muldoon's Soundprint thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/paul-muldoon.... My notebook says I should include "The Triumph" (TLS, 2020, then /Howdie-Skelp/) and "Near Izium" (Irish Times, 2022, then /Tagore/) ... Amazing to me that/
Now up and running - Unlost: Anne Carson Relational Bibliography v.1.0, listing 3,504 works by, on, and in Anne Carson, categorized by type, crossed-referenced, and annotated with over 1,000 subject tags. Carson fans and scholars, have a look: unlost.uwaterloo.ca
My student RA built an etymology browser using all of wiktionary: thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca/guest-post-e...
I had such a fun time talking to the brilliant @kjavadizadeh.bsky.social about Sappho, poetics, sparrows, crushes, spells, and payback.
For my maiden post on ye cyan site, a link to my new article on antedating in the Oxford English Dictionary. In N&Q because people love to do antedatings there. Tagging @jacklynch000.bsky.social and @jessesword.com and @petermgilliver.bsky.social who may have an interest. link: tinyurl.com/yf8bxzee
