Poem to JRRT

[sartorias]

gregoryfeeley sent me copies of work from a poet I'd never heard of (my awareness of modern poetry is embarrassing) knowing I'd like her. He was right. This poet, Ursula Fanthorpe wrote the following:

GENESIS

(for J.R.R. Tolkien)In the beginning were the words

Comments

[sartorias]

*g*

[matociquala]

thank you, wow.

[faerie_writer]

I *love* that poem, especially "Consonants lanky as long-swords". ;)

[dancinghorse]

I suspect Grimm would be Grimm's Law. There are various Werners in linguistics--could be one or all of them.

Goethe had a Werther, but not a Werner that I recall.

Lovely poem, thank you.

More Agnes Porter, yay!

[sartorias]

Sigh... I know that--but scramble brain was mixing Werner (old boyfriend) and Werther (read over and over in German Classes) so early in the a.m...sigh.

And yeah, another friend wrote me off line and said it had to refer to the linguistics experts, about which I know zipperino.

[pameladean]

Jakob Grimm was a linguist; the fairy tales were kind of a sideline.

There's also a Werner's Law, which I did not grasp when I studied linguistics long ago and certainly do not grasp now; it's about vowel shifts in early Germanic languages, I think, but don't quote me. I think the Werner in question is Karl.

P.

[sartorias]

A friend wrtoe me off line and said they were both scholars of the vowel shift.