"I do not understand you."

"Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well."

"Me? -- yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible."

"Bravo! -- an excellent satire on modern language."

"But pray tell me what you mean."

Given the picture in today's icon, you might assume this dialogue is from Alice in Wonderland or ( Read more... )

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Yesterday's poem, "The butterfly obtains" by Emily Dickinson, got me thinking about butterflies and caterpillars (whence butterflies come), and about the latest movie version of Alice in Wonderland, which I mentioned on my blog after I first saw it in 2D with M. (I have since seen it in 3D with hubby, and copied down quite a few quotes while there ( Read more... )

First the poem, then some chat.

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves ( Read more... )

On rainy days as drear as today has been, I look for bits of brightness. Here's one:

The Mad Gardener's Song
by Lewis Carroll

He thought he saw an Elephant ( Read more... )

I've been thinking about "portmanteau words." That's the term Lewis Carroll invented to explain the existence of words like "frabjous", a conflation of fabulous and joyous (still not sure where the R came in, but it works). I've been performing Jabberwocky for class after class of school kids (with 2 classes left to go today), and I've been ( Read more... )

Edward Lear was a landscape painter as well as a poet. Perhaps that explains some of the color choices in his texts. He was especially fond of colors like "pea-green," which appeared not only in his famous verse, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, but also in The Jumblies, a poem in which folks set to see in a sieve to "the lands where the Jumblies live ( Read more... )

As I indicate last week, I've been reading The Annotated Hunting of the Snark: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll,, edited with notes by Martin Gardner.


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Until I began doing my Poetry Friday posts last May, I didn't realize what a Lewis Carroll fan I seem to be. If you were to ask me my favorite poets, then or now, I probably wouldn't list Carroll. And yet. Here it is, another Carrollian post.

This one is because I only yesterday purchased The Annotated Hunting of the Snark: The Definitive ( Read more... )