July 2023 – Princeton Writes

Word of the Week: pellucid (pə-LŌŌ-sĭd)

Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:35:34-04:00

Word of the Week: pellucid (pə-LŌŌ-sĭd) Definition (Adjective) Clear in sense and expression, lucid. In Context "For there is a remarkable diversity in Cicero's style, ranging from the solemn rotundity of his oratorical perorations, through the pellucid but still formal rhythms of his treatises, to the various degrees of colloquialism in his letters." Michael Grant, Translator, Cicero: Selected Works, 1960. This word was suggested by Robert Sweet in the Office of Development.

Word of the Week: pellucid (pə-LŌŌ-sĭd)Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:35:34-04:00

A Poem for You: Paris and Helen BY JUDY GRAHN

admin2023-05-08T12:39:36-04:00

Paris and Helen BY JUDY GRAHN He called her: golden dawn She called him: the wind whistles He called her: heart of the sky She called him: message bringer He called her: mother of pearl barley woman, rice provider, millet basket, corn maid, flax princess, all-maker, weef She called him: fawn, roebuck, stag, courage, thunderman, all-in-green, mountain strider keeper of forests, my-love-rides He called her: the tree is She called him: bird dancing He called her: who stands, has stood, will always stand She called him: arriver He called her: the heart and the womb [...]

A Poem for You: Paris and Helen BY JUDY GRAHNadmin2023-05-08T12:39:36-04:00

Word of the Week: fatuous (FĂCH-ōō-əs)

Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:31:59-04:00

Word of the Week: fatuous (FĂCH-ōō-əs) Definition (Adjective) Of persons, their actions, feelings, utterances, etc.: Foolish, vacantly silly, stupid, besotted. In Context "Our city governments are, in many instances, foul cancers on the body politic; and for us to boast of having solved the problem of local self-government is as fatuous as for a strong man to exult in his health when his body is covered with running sores." James M. Beck, The Constitution of the United States, 1924.

Word of the Week: fatuous (FĂCH-ōō-əs)Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:31:59-04:00

A Poem for You: Belle Isle, 1949 BY PHILIP LEVINE

admin2023-05-08T12:34:43-04:00

Belle Isle, 1949 BY PHILIP LEVINE We stripped in the first warm spring night and ran down into the Detroit River to baptize ourselves in the brine of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles, melted snow. I remember going under hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl I'd never seen before, and the cries our breath made caught at the same time on the cold, and rising through the layers of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere that was this world, the girl breaking the surface after me and swimming out on the starless waters towards the lights of Jefferson Ave. [...]

A Poem for You: Belle Isle, 1949 BY PHILIP LEVINEadmin2023-05-08T12:34:43-04:00

Word of the Week: avatar (ĂV-ə-tär)

Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:30:15-04:00

Word of the Week: avatar (ĂV-ə-tär) Definition (Noun) Manifestation in human form; incarnation. In Context "Black music was everywhere in New York in the mid-1920s as an avatar of the contemporary moment." Todd Decker, Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical, 2013.

Word of the Week: avatar (ĂV-ə-tär)Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:30:15-04:00

A Poem for You: Testament by Connie Voisine

admin2023-05-08T12:30:48-04:00

Testament BY CONNIE VOISINE The cat wants to be a strong thing—a hand, a tree. The girl wants to be a pirate, in a tree. The tree wants to be the pond with its face of shining. The pond wants to be the sun who dumps its sugar on the grass. The grass wants to be the foot, its sole, its heel. The foot wants to be the brain who always gets to choose. The brain wants to be the feet dumb in their shoes. The shoe wants to be the buckle that the girl shines with a cloth. The buckle wants [...]

A Poem for You: Testament by Connie Voisineadmin2023-05-08T12:30:48-04:00

A Poem for You: How You Know BY JOE MILLS

admin2023-05-08T12:24:53-04:00

How You Know BY JOE MILLS How do you know if it’s love? she asks, and I think if you have to ask, it’s not, but I know this won’t help. I want to say you’re too young to worry about it, as if she has questions about Medicare or social security, but this won’t help either. “You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth, “when you still want to be with them the next morning,” would involve too many follow-up questions. The difficulty with love, I want to say, is sometimes you only know afterwards that it’s arrived or left. Love [...]

A Poem for You: How You Know BY JOE MILLSadmin2023-05-08T12:24:53-04:00

Word of the Week: stupefy (STŌŌ-pə-fī)

Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:27:06-04:00

Word of the Week: stupefy (STŌŌ-pə-fī) Definition (Verb) To make stupid or torpid; to deprive of apprehension, feeling, or sensibility; to benumb, deaden. In Context "Before the introduction of anaesthesia during the nineteenth century, a mixture of opium and alcohol was extensively used to stupefy surgical patients and to shield them from the pain of operations." Martin Plant, Roy Robertson, Moira Plant, and Patrick Miller, Drug Nation: Patterns, Problems, Panics, and Policies, 2011.

Word of the Week: stupefy (STŌŌ-pə-fī)Stephanie Whetstone2023-05-03T10:27:06-04:00

A Poem for You: Flight BY IDRISSA SIMMONDS

admin2023-05-08T12:19:54-04:00

Flight BY IDRISSA SIMMONDS I call to ask my mother the name of the street where we bought the suitcases when we left Brooklyn. A better question would have been how did it feel to be sliced from the rib of Pine and Loring and sent, like a kite, up North. Or tell me what your mother said to you in her grand rear room the night we left, seated on the edge of her bed in her nightgown, muted in the low light. So many bellies in the house. Cacophony of kreyol and Brooklyn buk and sweet sweat across the walls. [...]

A Poem for You: Flight BY IDRISSA SIMMONDSadmin2023-05-08T12:19:54-04:00

Book of the Month: To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf

admin2023-05-22T14:53:00-04:00

To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf Critical Evaluation "Once again Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational. Clarissa Dalloway is a marvelous synthesis, and it is just for that reason that 'Mrs. Dalloway,' which has been identified because of its modernity with the "Ulysses" school, differs from it in character fundamentals, for it is as objective as "Ulysses" is autobiographical and observational. There is nothing 'photographic' about Mrs. Woolf's characters, here or in 'Mrs. Dalloway.' Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical [...]

Book of the Month: To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolfadmin2023-05-22T14:53:00-04:00

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