March 2022 – Princeton Writes

Word of the Week: mawkish (MÔ-kĭsh)

Stephanie Whetstone2022-01-26T13:29:59-05:00

Word of the Week: mawkish (MÔ-kĭsh) Definition (Adjective) Imbued with sickly, false, or feeble sentiment; overly sentimental. In Context "To commercial filmmakers, the bromides suggested by OWI propagandists – wordy soliloquies about freedom, boring discussions of the war's meaning, mawkish dramatizations of unity – seemed destined to be box office poison." M. Todd Bennett, One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II, 2012.

Word of the Week: mawkish (MÔ-kĭsh)Stephanie Whetstone2022-01-26T13:29:59-05:00

A Poem for You: Map

admin2021-12-13T11:48:38-05:00

Map Linda Hogan This is the world so vast and lonely without end, with mountains named for men who brought hunger from other lands, and fear of the thick, dark forest of trees that held each other up, knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them and spoke an older tongue, and the tongue of the nation of wolves was the wind around them. Even ice was not silent. It cried its broken self back to warmth. But they called it ice, wolf, forest of sticks, as if words would make it something they could hold in gloved hands, open, plot a way [...]

A Poem for You: Mapadmin2021-12-13T11:48:38-05:00

A Poem for You: 14 Love Songs

admin2021-12-13T11:43:52-05:00

14 Love Songs Elizabeth Jacobson Above a pond, I sit on a wooden bench and throw pebbles into the willows. A rush of sunlight and wind creates a path in a channel of water, dances between the melting ice and brown islands of bulrush. The resident osprey, its eyes the color of yellow grass, follows my tossing hand. Love is a diorama of inner life in an outer world. I look down and find a chunk of fossilized rock with an entire Paleozoic shell sticking out. I am not afraid of love, but terrified of how it is my steady guide. [...]

A Poem for You: 14 Love Songsadmin2021-12-13T11:43:52-05:00

Word of the Week: polyglot (PŎL-ē-glŏt)

Stephanie Whetstone2022-01-26T13:10:26-05:00

Word of the Week: polyglot (PŎL-ē-glŏt) Definition (Adjective) Of a person: that speaks, writes, or understands a number of languages. In Context "The mood of the sessions was probably leavened by the presence of amiable, polyglot General Vernon A. Walters, the American ambassador known for his affinity for easing conversation with a good anecdote." Stanley Meisler, United Nations: A History, 2011.

Word of the Week: polyglot (PŎL-ē-glŏt)Stephanie Whetstone2022-01-26T13:10:26-05:00

Word of the Week: adamantine (ăd-ə-MĂN-tēn)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-12-07T14:15:18-05:00

Word of the Week: adamantine (ăd-ə-MĂN-tēn) Definition (Adjective) That cannot be easily overcome or defeated; rigid, unyielding; unwavering, immovable; (now especially) refusing to be persuaded or to change one's mind. In Context "Contrary to popular impression, the real art of colonial government was not an adamantine rigidity but a machiavellian flexibility in the perpetual search for collaborators." Robert Holland, Editor, Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires after 1945, 1994.

Word of the Week: adamantine (ăd-ə-MĂN-tēn)Stephanie Whetstone2021-12-07T14:15:18-05:00

A Poem for You: Theme for English B

admin2021-12-07T13:53:30-05:00

Theme for English B Langston Hughes The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take [...]

A Poem for You: Theme for English Badmin2021-12-07T13:53:30-05:00

A Poem for You: No Images

admin2021-12-07T13:16:28-05:00

No Images BY WILLIAM WARING CUNEY She does not know her beauty, she thinks her brown body has no glory. If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river, she would know. But there are no palm trees on the street, and dish water gives back no images.

A Poem for You: No Imagesadmin2021-12-07T13:16:28-05:00

Word of the Week: factotum (făk-TŌ-təm)

Stephanie Whetstone2021-12-07T14:12:29-05:00

Word of the Week: factotum (făk-TŌ-təm) Definition (Noun) An employee who does all kinds of work; (especially in earlier use) a domestic servant or employee who undertakes all kinds of household tasks. In Context "An abbot is not a factotum; he cannot and should not do everything." Mark A. Scott, At Home with Saint Benedict: Monastery Talks, 2011.

Word of the Week: factotum (făk-TŌ-təm)Stephanie Whetstone2021-12-07T14:12:29-05:00

The Art of Revision

admin2022-10-12T11:02:39-04:00

The Art of Revision by Stephanie Whetstone Congratulations, fellow writer, you've finished a draft! So, you're done, right? Wrong. No published book, dissertation, thesis, or essay you have ever read was written in one draft. Even if you don't plan to publish, anything you plan to share with an audience deserves (at least) a second look. In fact, many writers say that the real work of writing comes through revision. So, the first draft is just the beginning. That is both the bad news and the good news. Revision does take time--reading and re-reading, taking a break in between revisions to [...]

The Art of Revisionadmin2022-10-12T11:02:39-04:00

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (2019)

admin2022-01-27T12:10:52-05:00

Book of the Month: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (2019) Critical Evaluation "It takes guts to write a fairy tale these days. No P.R. blurb is complete without the descriptors 'searing,' 'probing,' 'challenging' or the like. The use of destabilizing narrative techniques (which often force critics to either include spoilers or to be oblique in order to avoid them) is so prevalent as to seem almost de rigueur. At a moment when everything in the world feels on the verge of falling apart, there seems to be a widespread cultural expectation (in the West, anyway) that serious art — the [...]

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (2019)admin2022-01-27T12:10:52-05:00

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