Take Two

Ah, the old 'take two', the second attempt at filling the old white box. What could cascade from the fingers this time, and will it be more of the same old nonsense? How could it be? This is a Wednesday, right? Nothing repetitive ever happens on a Wednesday!

Hmmm. This is going to be a tough one. Does anyone here know anything about poetry? I've been trying hard, as part of student preparation, to get into poetry but this stubborn dislike of unrhyming and unmetered verse persists. The primary case in point is the collected poetry of Robert Frost. I know, absolutely, that he was a revered poet of distinguished renown, however most of his verse leaves me utterly cold. Where's the beauty? Poetry that doesn't rhyme reads like random words sludged on to a page, and unmetered verse is just prose and bad prose at that. Send all complaints to this barbarian in the usual way, please. It's not poetry, I say!

Shakespeare's Sonnets are pretty ropey too, but for different reasons. They verge on being total gibberish at times, don't they? However, let us now move on to some random words of the day, drawn from the Phrontistery, some of which might even be amusing...

idioticon: vocabulary of a particular district
illusionism: belief that the external world is philosophy
indifferentism: the belief that all religions are equally valid
iotacism: excessive use of the letter 'i'
irenic: conducive to or working towards peace

It is rather endearing to learn that there was a word for excessive use of the letter 'i', isn't it? I can imagine the scholars now, combing through their students` theses and counting the i's, hoping against hope that they would get to deploy their favourite criticism. "You used the letter 'i' too much! Too much! What a hideous iotacism this is!"

There is also a far worse interpretation of 'iotacism'; it could refer to a work in which the first person singular 'I' is used far too often, a habit far too ingrained into the population in general. That's even a problem that gets into this writer's writing on a regular basis too... A 'iotacism' could well be a sign of overly self-centred nonsense...

O.