Thing-a-day.com

So, after having missed four days due to being busy, here is my thing:

The Serious Work of Being Dead

After the funeral,
Lying in mineral,
Blood-streamed with chemical –
No piece of chronicle,
No room for madrigal.

So, I’m not even going to dignify this with the word “poem” or even “verse exercise.” Just stringing together some similar sounding words and giving a ridiculous title to it. However, I am impressed that it came out in dactyllic dimiter. How many people do you know who write in dactyllic dimiter?

But, just because I am fascinated with the relationships between writers and readers, I will point this out: look how much we are indebted to to others, even when writing something under 20 words. “Piece of chronicle” is from John Donne’s “Canonization,” and the words chronicle and madrigal together comes from Edmund Blunden’s 1924 collection of John Clare poems Madrigals and Chronicles.

x-posted

My thing for today is a process for choosing a series of words where the first and last words are antonyms (they mean the opposite thing) and each word between them is a synonym (they have a similar meaning). The “distance” refers to how many synonyms you must choose before reaching the antonym. I’ve never heard of this before, so I’ll assume I’m inventing it here.

Without further ado, the synonym/antonym sequence for “dynamic” and “static” (s/a distance of 8):

1. Dynamic
2. Vital
3. Essential
4. Intrinsic
5. Indelible
6. Permanent
7. Stable
8. Static

I used the built-in Apple Dictionary program to choose these, but I’m assuming it would work similarly with other references. I’m curious which words might produce the shortest distances.