Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Penguin - The Swordfish


I discovered Ruth's blog a couple of days ago and today, while going back a bit through the archives, found one of her funny posts that had a very cute poem which played with words.  It made me laugh because I enjoy word play very much and have so much respect for people who are real masters of it.

The poem above was written by a scientist/physicist by the name of Robert Williams Wood.  He wrote 2 books which I discovered when going to summer camp in Nova Scotia:  How To Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Animal Analogues.  This particular poem tickled me because I remember hearing both my mother and some of my teachers going on about how "the pen was mightier than the sword."  I actually memorized it when I was a teenager, so many years ago.

In the US, there is no copyright on this work, so I downloaded it and will be posting it over the next few weeks because it is so clever. I hope you enjoy the poems, too, and that they bring a grin and guffaw to you!  You can click on the image to enlarge it.

4 comments:

Ruth said...

This is cute - I've never seen it. We had a book called Crazy English, which I can't find. So many irregularities and anomalies, makes it fun to play with it.

My husband pointed out yesterday that there is a reason spelling bees are so popular in English-speaking countries - so much of it is irregular, so it is a challenge. They would never have a spelling bee in Turkey - where the language is utterly phonetic. :)

Delphyne said...

I agree that English is irregular - just look at homonyms! Well, at least we don't have to remember which noun is male or female - and those don't make sense either. For example, in Spanish, the word for ovaries is los ovarios - male. Who has ovaries? Females - it should be las ovarias, in my opinion!

Ruth said...

Wow, that is strange about Spanish for ovaries. :|

Delphyne said...

It is, Ruth - assuming that because it's a Latin based language, the Catholic Church and its priests had something to do with how things were named....I never did research any of it and always bring it up with any new Spanish speaking friends I make in case they know the answer to why ovary is a male noun in Spanish!