Word: poetics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...engagements should be a success for France's mission civilisatrice. In telling the story of Alceste, a man torn between hatred of the world's deceit and flattery and his own love for a deceitful, flattering widow named Célimène, Molière pressed poetic comedy and satiric wit to the edge of tears. Le Misanthrope is his bittersweet masterpiece. In a comedy of manners, Alceste's notion of telling the truth himself on all occasions and correcting the chicanery of the age clearly marks him as a crackpot bound for grief...
...calls for changes in rowing speed and power at strategic moments in the race. Occasional "Power Tens" are yelled out to gain a decisive edge with ten all-out strokes; the coxswain's comments range from the factual "Great--we gained ten feet with that Ten" to the more poetic "Give me a Ten that'll make the coach weep...
...islands are as delightful to the philologist as they are to the bird watcher or plant stalker. All Hawaiian place names have meanings, poetic or factual. Maui's Waianapanapa, site of a 120-acre, stream-laced state park, is "glistening water." There are lao (valley of dawning inspiration), Kapilau (sprinkle of rain on leaves), Lanilili (rippling surface) and Waiakoa (waters used by warrior). Kaanapali is "rolling cliffs." It is comforting when boating off Wailea to know that the "waters [are] governed by Lea," goddess of canoe making. Lahaina is "land of prophecies...
...curious twist of fate, which some might call poetic justice, Mexico finally has something that the United States desperately wants--huge reserves of oil and natural gas--and has no intention of obediently giving it away. Experts predict that by 1980 Mexico will be the world's fifth largest producer of oil, just behind Saudi Arabia...
...writing. Of modern verse he complains, "Sometimes I feel that there is a faraway country where much of the English poetry that is printed today was originally written. Our poets, without knowing the language well, translate it into that universal idiom known as translatese. Hence its lack of poetic rhythm, its inability to leave the ground. And when our poets do know how to write verse, they often pitch their tone very low as if to assure us that their lines will require no emotional response." Lytton Strachey, recalls the aphorist, once told him that Horace could...