Here’s a new book spine poem (aka bookmash). For the uninitiated: This is a game where you make a visual poem from the spines of books on your shelf.
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Secret Place
Wild flowers, the wild places,
The birds of the innocent wood –
The secret place on the black hill,
Half a life still life,
The living mountain
Changing my mind.
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books, literature, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: A.S. Byatt, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Bruce Chatwin, Deirdre Madden, found poetry, literature, Nan Shepherd, nature, nature poetry, photography, poetry, Richard Fitter, Robert Macfarlane, Tana French, V.S. Naipaul, visual poetry, wordplay, Zadie Smith | 
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Posted by Stan Carey
I almost forgot how much fun it is to make book spine poems. My last one was about a year ago (and led to an interview at the OED), so it’s about time I did another. This one tells a miniature story.
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When the Lights Go Down
Stranger on a train, heading inland,
Civilwarland in bad decline.
Autumn-dark voyage,
The light of evening,
The signal and the noise.
One shot without conscience
when the lights go down:
Death in a white tie, a brilliant void.
Reader, I murdered him.
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4 Comments | books, literature, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Alan Furst, Ali Smith, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Edna O'Brien, found poetry, Jack Fennell, Jen Green, Jenny Diski, Lee Child, literature, Nate Silver, Ngaio Marsh, Nicola Barker, Pauline Kael, poetry, Robert Hare, visual poetry, wordplay | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
Some weeks ago I made a visual poem from book spines to mark the 90th anniversary of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED editors liked it enough to republish it on their website; they also asked me a few things about language, dictionaries, and book spine poetry.
You can read my short interview on the new OED blog. If dictionaries and word history interest you, I recommend the rest of the blog – click the image below – which looks at the OED‘s reception in 1928, the work of editors past and present, and dialect words from around the world, among other things.
For more book spine poems, aka bookmashes, see the archive.
4 Comments | books, language, language history, lexicography, personal, poetry, words | Tagged: book spine poem, bookmash, books, dictionaries, found poetry, language, language history, lexicography, OED, OED90, personal, poetry, visual poetry, wordplay, words | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
Ninety years ago today, the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary – 414,825 words defined in 15,487 pages over 12 volumes – was completed. Invited by its editors to mark the anniversary, I’ve made a new book spine poem, dedicated to the OED and to James Murray:
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Walking Word by Word
Caught in the web of words,
The loom of language,
The stuff of thought,
The story of writing –
a line made by
walking word by
word through the
language glass.
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17 Comments | books, lexicography, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Andrew Robinson, book spine poem, book spine poems, bookmash, books, concrete poetry, dictionaries, found poetry, Frederick Bodmer, Guy Deutscher, James Murray, K M Elisabeth Murray, Kory Stamper, language, lexicography, OED, photography, poetry, Sara Baume, Steven Pinker, visual poetry, wordplay | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
Shortly before H. W. Fowler’s renowned Dictionary of Modern English Usage appeared, almost a century ago, excerpts from it were published in the tracts of the Society for Pure English (Fowler was a member) and subject to critical commentary. One entry proved especially contentious, sparking a lively exchange with linguist Otto Jespersen.
These two grammatical heavyweights disagreed over what Fowler called the fused participle (aka possessive with gerund, or genitive before a gerund): a phrase like it led to us deciding, instead of the possessive form that Fowler would insist on: it led to our deciding.
When Fowler scorned the construction as ‘grammatically indefensible’, Jespersen (also in the tracts) defended it on historical principles and called Fowler’s piece ‘a typical specimen of the method of what I call the instinctive grammatical moralizer’.
Fowler’s reaction is described in The Warden of English, Jenny McMorris’s enjoyable and solidly researched account of the lexicographer’s life and work:
5 Comments | books, grammar, language, poetry, usage, writers | Tagged: books, fused participle, grammar, H W Fowler, Jenny McMorris, language, lexicography, Otto Jespersen, poetry, prescriptivism, speech, syntax, The Warden of English, usage, writers, writing | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
It’s a few months since I made one of these. So: a new book spine poem.
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‘Microworlds’
Microworlds, a patchwork planet
Solar bones brighter than
A thousand suns.
Gut symmetries collapse,
All fall down,
Vertigo: wide open –
Full catastrophe living.
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13 Comments | books, literature, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Anne Tyler, book spine poem, bookmash, books, found poetry, Ita Daly, Jared Diamond, Jeanette Winterson, Joanna Walsh, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mike McCormack, Nicola Barker, poetry, Robert Jungk, science fiction, Stanislaw Lem, visual poetry, wordplay | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
My latest piece of doggerel in book-spine form has an obvious theme.
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Language, Language!
Language, language!
The story of language.
Language, slanguage
Spoken here: a history of
Language, a history of
Writing: style, style,
Style in fiction,
Linguistics and style,
Language and linguistics.
What is linguistics?
Understanding language.
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9 Comments | books, language, linguistics, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Bernard Share, book spine poem, bookmash, books, C.L. Barber, Daniel Everett, David Crystal, Elizabeth Grace Winkler, F L Lucas, found poetry, Geoffrey N. Leech, John Lyons, John Spencer, Jonathon Green, Joseph M Williams, language, language books, Leonard Bloomfield, linguistics, Mark Abley, Michael H. Short, Michael J. Gregory, Nils Erik Enkvist, photography, poetry, Steven Roger Fischer, visual poetry, wordplay, writing style | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
