The sonnet is a neglected form these days.  Verse of all stripes is unpopular — at least under that name, although it still defines popular music.  It’s all in the branding, I suppose. And current taste often brands the sonnet as precious, artificial, or old-fashioned.  Fair enough; although you could tar most American entertainment genres with […]

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It’s been said that the two things you should never watch being made are laws and sausages.  This vintage stereo card shows one of the above. The observation is usually credited to Bismarck; a check of the www reveals multiple versions of it, and no definite source.  Huh.  The image can be safely ascribed to […]

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The circle is a rich and potent symbol: of knowledge (Charles Fort’s “One measures a circle, beginning anywhere”), of divinity (the proverbial “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere”), and of futility (those “vicious circles”), to name a few.  I know of only one passage, however, that literally dissects the circle, […]

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