Lawrence Hall, HSG
Search Them Out and Destroy Them
Do you truly and honestly
want your writing
Finally to be actually and
really stronger?
Then go search out your
adverbs. Kill them all.
Do you want your writing
to be stronger?
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Adverbs - Search Them Out and Destroy Them
Friday, March 8, 2024
Wild Insects I Have Known - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Wild Insects I
Have Known
(as Ernest Thompson Seton did not say)
Please don’t tell me that red wasps are benign
A recent one I met had my behind in mind
Its sting by design was most malign
So as I sit please be patient and kind
If I indulge in an unmanly whine!
Sunday, March 3, 2024
No One Keeps a Diary Anymore - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
No One Keeps a
Diary Anymore
Which
is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three
thousand tyrants one mile away?
– Mather Byles
No one keeps a
diary – life is safer that way
Men have been hanged for what they have written
It may be that they revealed some forgotten crime
Or, worse, that they possessed the gift of thought
No one keeps a diary – life is safer that way
The Moms for Liberty are scared of books
Even the diary of a little girl
Because children must not read or write or think
No one keeps a diary – life is safer that way -
And have you self-purged your own books today?
South Carolina school district reviews, returns books after
ban attempt (msn.com)
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Bees and Breeze and Lime-Green Butterflies - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Bees and Breeze
and Lime-Green Butterflies
How
beautiful the world is
In
the morning cool and clear!
-Anna Ahkmatova, “The Lime-Trees by the Open Door”
Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies
Follow the little green electric tiller
Bouncing through the turf from clod to clod
Upending roots and sticks and last year’s grass
Fresh soil awakened from its winter sleep
Eager to push summer sunflowers up and up
Sneezes and wheezes follow the tiller too
Pollens in green and yellow, clouds of allergens
But, oh, the earthen scents, perfect skies -
Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies!
Friday, March 1, 2024
Is LONESOME DOVE a Sacred Text? - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
One of Texas’
Sacred Books
Taking an oath by placing one hand
On a copy of Lonesome Dove
Is not yet law in our sacred land
But by the Grace of God above…
Someday it might be
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Never Mind the Guns and the Drugs; Seize the Books - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Never Mind the Guns
and the Drugs; Seize the Books
By
1938, the Nazis had banned eighteen categories of books,
4,175
titles, and the complete works of 565 authors…
-Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War
Ideologues search libraries for dirty books
Because reading might give people ideas
And encourage them to think for themselves
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
Censors search Mary Poppins for dirty words
Because a wide vocabulary might give people ideas
And encourage them to think for themselves
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
In an era when even mere literacy is suspicious
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
How conservative and liberal book bans differ amid rise in
literary restrictions - ABC News (go.com)
The Spread of Book Banning - The New York Times
(nytimes.com)
States Tell SCOTUS That Social Media Censors Conservatives :
The NPR Politics Podcast : NPR
List of banned films - Wikipedia
Over 170 books banned from Florida school libraries
following new education reform - CBS News
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