February 2022 – Princeton Writes

Word of the Week: fulminate (FŎŎL-mə-nāt)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:35:11-05:00

Word of the Week: fulminate (FŎŎL-mə-nāt) Definition (Verb) Of the pope, etc.: To issue censures or condemnations (against); generally to "thunder," inveigh violently against. In Context "By the early 1930s, watching defenders of Prohibition fulminate about the demon rum in the sound newsreels, thirsty moviegoers jeered and hissed." Thomas Doherty, Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration, 2007.

Word of the Week: fulminate (FŎŎL-mə-nāt)Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:35:11-05:00

A Poem for You: Subway Wind

admin2021-12-07T13:13:19-05:00

Subway Wind BY CLAUDE MCKAY Far down, down through the city’s great gaunt gut The gray train rushing bears the weary wind; In the packed cars the fans the crowd’s breath cut, Leaving the sick and heavy air behind. And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door To give their summer jackets to the breeze; Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas; Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep, Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift Lightly among [...]

A Poem for You: Subway Windadmin2021-12-07T13:13:19-05:00

A Poem for You: I Stop Writing the Poem

admin2021-11-11T11:19:37-05:00

I Stop Writing the Poem to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I'm still a woman. I'll always have plenty to do. I bring the arms of his shirt together. Nothing can stop our tenderness. I'll get back to the poem. I'll get back to being a woman. But for now there's a shirt, a giant shirt in my hands, and somewhere a small girl standing next to her mother watching to see how it's done. by Tess Gallagher

A Poem for You: I Stop Writing the Poemadmin2021-11-11T11:19:37-05:00

Word of the Week: quotidian (kwō-TĬD-ē-ən)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:32:29-05:00

Word of the Week: quotidian (kwō-TĬD-ē-ən) Definition (Adjective) Of an everyday character; commonplace, mundane, ordinary. In Context "These are the solid, obvious, sharply outlined, in-the-way things of quotidian experience: the walls that obstruct, the rain that falls, the projectile that hits, the stone that stubs." Lorraine Daston, Editor, Biographies of Scientific Objects, 2000.

Word of the Week: quotidian (kwō-TĬD-ē-ən)Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:32:29-05:00

Word of the Week: instauration (in-staw-RAY-shun)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:36:13-05:00

Word of the Week: instauration (in-staw-RAY-shun) Definition (Noun) 1. restoration after decay, lapse, or dilapidation 2. an act of instituting or establishing something In Context "Once, humanity dreamed of the great instauration—a rebirth of ancient wisdom that would compel us into a New Age…." Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, 14 Dec. 2005

Word of the Week: instauration (in-staw-RAY-shun)Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-15T11:36:13-05:00

A Poem for You: In the Bone-Cracking Cold

admin2021-11-11T11:22:47-05:00

In the Bone-Cracking Cold BY M. BARTLEY SEIGEL On this cross-quarter day, quick to temper and cool, your long lashes startle me with their rime of hoarfrost, and I am snared like a rabbit pulled into your gravity by the run of our long love affair together. The seasons race past, one following another, and the rising sap is soon to halo the maples again. I will happily freeze in the bone-cracking cold, just to watch you walk slowly through this sugarbush, rare as a sundog incandescent in a fog of softly falling snow.

A Poem for You: In the Bone-Cracking Coldadmin2021-11-11T11:22:47-05:00

A Poem for You: Ashberries: Letters

admin2021-11-11T10:50:22-05:00

Ashberries: Letters BY PHILIP METRES 1. Outside, in a country with no word for outside, they cluster on trees, red bunches. I looked up ryabina, found mountain ash. No mountains here, just these berries cradled in yellow leaves. When I rise, you fall asleep. We barely know each other, you said on the phone last night. Today, sun brushes the wall like an empty canvas, voices from outside drift into this room. I can't translate—my words, frostbitten fingers. I tell no one, how your hands ghost over my back, letters I hold. 2. Reading children's stories by Tolstoy, Alyosha traces his index over the alphabet [...]

A Poem for You: Ashberries: Lettersadmin2021-11-11T10:50:22-05:00

Word of the Week: bamboozle (băm-BŌŌ-zəl)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-11T11:27:43-05:00

Word of the Week: bamboozle (băm-BŌŌ-zəl) Definition (Verb) To deceive by trickery, hoax, cozen, impose upon. In Context "No statesman, however old, eminent, selfish, or resourceful, was able for long to bamboozle or bedazzle his equally famous, and equally adroit, colleagues; only Bismarck, and perhaps Beaconsfield during the first fortnight, succeeded in establishing over the other delegates something of the personal ascendancy that they enjoyed in their own cabinets." W. N. Medlicott, The Congress of Berlin and After: A Diplomatic History of the Near Eastern Settlement, 1878-1880, Second Edition, 1963.

Word of the Week: bamboozle (băm-BŌŌ-zəl)Stephanie Whetstone2021-11-11T11:27:43-05:00

Speaking While Masked

admin2022-01-27T13:33:30-05:00

Speaking While Masked As the pandemic enters its third year, the role of masks in reducing the risk of infection has been well documented. In the words of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Correct and consistent mask use is a critical step everyone can take to prevent getting and spreading COVID-19." Unfortunately, the protective barriers that masks create can hamper communication unless we compensate for them. I suspect that anyone who has worn a mask has struggled, at times, to be understood. More than once, I have had to repeat myself while placing an order at Starbucks, as in a [...]

Speaking While Maskedadmin2022-01-27T13:33:30-05:00

Book of the Month: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

admin2021-11-17T11:37:23-05:00

Book of the Month: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977) Critical Evaluation "Toni Morrison’s first two books — “The Bluest Eye” with the purity of its terrors and “Sula” with its dense poetry and the depth of its probing into a small circle of lives — were strong novels. Yet, firm as they both were in achievement and promise, they didn’t fully forecast her new book, “Song of Solomon.” Here the depths of the younger work are still evident, but now they thrust outward, into wider fields, for longer intervals, encompassing many more lives. The result is a long prose [...]

Book of the Month: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)admin2021-11-17T11:37:23-05:00

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