(Untitled)

[labellementeuse]

Something for the last week of poetry month: "The Most Beautiful Love Poem of All Time" by Hera Lindsay Bird is really something. She also has a name of which I am truly envious. (Hera Bird. Come on.) I must disclaim at this juncture that Hera is a v good friend of my flattie and I've met her a few times and like her a lot but this poem is really

Comments

[shihadchick]

I would need to check to cite this properly, but iirc Toews was at a French-speaking school for years before he went to Shattuck-St Mary's and they wanted to make sure his English was back up to scratch, so I would suspect the people saying he has perfect Quebecois are more likely to be accurate? And his mother is certainly a fluent native speaker as well.

Also, man, I heard American Pie on the radio the other day driving home and was impressed/horrified by the fact I got the whole way through the Saga Begins without prompting. I didn't realise I knew ALL of the lyrics that well. o_O (I mean, natch I had to wait for the music to catch up in the middle because LONGEST SONG EVER, but.)

[labellementeuse]

What I have gleaned from approximately a million interviews is that he was in an immersion school K-9 and grew up speaking to his mother in Quebecois and his father in English - so it seems likely, though I don't know how immersion immersion schools are in Manitoba. I did see an interview where he said shifting to English for the last few years of HS were a bit of a shock so I guess it was total immersion rather than a bilingual school (sidebar, this is one of the key philosophical debates around immersion vs bilingual because there's some evidence that, although being bilingual is great for educational and social achievement [particularly among Māori in NZ], if you go preps through Year 13 in just one language and assume that wider society will take care of your dominant language, you might have trouble using that dominant language in certain formal settings or, say, in writing).

I've done that too! Although in public at a Christmas party! Uh. (And I also really love American Pie, so I would never overwrite it with the Saga Begins.

[shihadchick]

That all sounds about right, though yeah, ihni about education in Manitoba to judge how much that would do so. And hrm, interesting. I can see how that could be an issue, for sure.

Heeeeeeeee! (I am mostly indifferent to American Pie, it's just I don't know any of the actual lyrics aside from the chorus, so. *g* I also sing Imperial Rhapsody over Bohemian Rhapsody sometimes, too, so mostly I'm just a wretch. *g*)

[labellementeuse]

DID YOU WRITE THE BOOK OF LOVE
AND DO YOU HAVE FAITH IN GOD ABOVE
IF THE BIBLE TELLS YOU SO?
AND DO YOU BELIEVE IN ROCK & ROLL
CAN MUSIC SAVE YOUR MORTAL SOUL
AND CAN YOU TEACH ME HOW TO DANCE REAL SLOW?

WELL I KNOW THAT YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HIM
BECAUSE I SAW YOU DANCING IN THE GYM
YOU BOTH KICKED OFF YOUR SHOES
MAN I DIG THOSE RHYTHM AND BLUES

brought to you by feelings about American Pie lyrics