Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
April 1, 2015

He said it . . .
“Don’t scorn your life just because it’s not dramatic, or it’s impoverished, or it looks dull, or it’s workaday. Don’t scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you’ve got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open.” – Philip Levine (1928-2015), former U.S. poet laureate describing what he learned from William Carlos Williams

Who’s up next . . .

April 7: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 16, Coastie Girl), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Mike Rickey (poems), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), Millie Mader (chapter 62, Life on Hold), and Andy Brown (chapters, The Last Library).

April 14: ???

April 21: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Amber Boudreau (???), Mo Bebow-Reinhard (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 17, Coastie Girl), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), and Judith McNeil (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapters 16-17, Rooster’s Story).

Fifth Tuesday . . .

It’s done. It’s gone. A great evening last week at Mystery To Me sharing laughs with the writing challenge.
So now plan ahead. Put our next Fifth Tuesday on your calendar . . . June 30. First-and-third group hosts.

We have a new editor . . .

Amit Trivedi is our Writers Mail editor for April. If you have good stuff you want included in an issue, send it to Amit at Runik2@yahoo.gov

Great word, fun with poetry . . .

From Wordsmith Anu Garg:

limerick
PRONUNCIATION: (LIM-uhr-ik)
MEANING: (noun) A humorous, often risque, verse of three long (A) and two short (B) lines with the rhyme scheme AABBA.
ETYMOLOGY: After Limerick, a county in Ireland. The origin of the name of the verse is said to be from the refrain “Will you come up to Limerick?” sung after each set of extemporized verses popular at gatherings. Earliest documented use: 1896.

NOTES:
Here’s how someone has described a limerick:
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

USAGE:
“First of all, the limerick judges at this newspaper would like contestants to know that we are acutely aware that ‘Journal’ rhymes with ‘urinal’. Almost as much fun as reading limericks was reading excuses from the people who wrote the limericks. It was as if we had caught someone reading the Sex With Aliens Weekly at the supermarket. Diane Harvey, of DeForest, for example, began her entrant thusly:

It is with a deep sense of shame that I submit the following puerile, low-brow limericks, and confess the guilty pleasure I had in writing them. As one who normally leads a completely respectable life, I cannot tell you what an illicit thrill it was to shed the trappings of responsible adulthood and for a ‘brief shining moment’ indulge in rude juvenile humor once again.

“Several writers put the ‘Journal-urinal’ rhyme to obvious use, and a few similarly included good-humored critiques of columnist George Hesselberg, as in the one by Dan Barker, of Madison:
There once was a parrot named Colonel,
Who read all the papers diurnal.
But his favorite page
On the floor of his cage
Was the Hesselberg page from the Journal.”
– Limerick Tricks: Readers Turn Their Talents to Punny, Funny Rhymes; Wisconsin State Journal (Madison); Jun 2, 1996.

The last word . . .
“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” – William S. Burroughs (1947-1981), novelist