Word: singsongs
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...unstable, subject to sudden disappearances and weird transformations. They are constantly auditioning nuanced identities in hopes of pleasing insanely unpredictable parents. At the kitchen table now, Bly becomes his spiritual and poetic mentor, William Butler Yeats, going trancey and reciting The Lake Isle of Innisfree in a high Irish singsong, tone-deaf Yeats sliding up and down at the end of the line searching for the note...
...distrust and are discolored by cuts and bruises. "How have you been shot down?" drills a harsh, disembodied voice. "What do you think about this aggression against Iraq?" The men respond woodenly, the rhythms of their speech halting and stilted. Some employ peculiar accents. One lapses into a singsong cadence. Another refuses -- or is unable -- to lift his head...
...rustic lodge on Gull Lake in pristine northern Minnesota hums with singsong, flat-voweled excitement. The 500 sensibly dressed welfare workers in the convention crowd usually dish out encouragement for a living. But today they will be on the receiving end from a former recipient who managed to get herself off welfare and onto the best-seller list. Here she is, flashing her big white smile: Melody Beattie, queen of codependency...
...children in war, vacillating between denial and pride. They revere childhood enough to try to preserve its innocence. A wooden schoolhouse in a village near Manerplaw is a tidy outpost of chalkboards, geography maps and tattered textbooks. Students wear blue-and-white uniforms and recite their lessons in singsong unison. They study math, history, Karen, English and even Burmese, and there is no time for indoctrination or propaganda. The war is only a few miles away, but little of it intrudes into the classroom...
...What gets to me about that theme," Thomas tells his visitor, "is that it takes many directions but basically it's all one thing: falling." That reminds him of a Rilke poem, Autumn. "The leaves are falling," he says in singsong paraphrase, playing the passage again, "falling from on high as if from heaven's dying orchards. And each leaf falls with its own special gesture of denial, saying...