English Pronunciation

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Image Source

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.

Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?

It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

~ English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Source

Or If you'd rather listen to it, you can click HERE..

A Lover And A Fighter - Christopher Nicholson

Everyone should go buy this book, especially if you love poetry. But even if you don't, I know you'll enjoy this guy's work. Chris is one of my best friends, he's a great guy, and I've read a few of these, so I know how good they are!

"A book of poetry written for the ones I love and the ones who supported me through the most difficult and trying times in my life."

Click the pic for more information over at Amazon Dot Com.

Haikus Don't Make Sense

Via - (NSFW)

A Golf Poem

In My Hand I Hold A Ball,
White And Dimpled, Rather Small.

Oh, How Bland It Does Appear,
This Harmless Looking Little Sphere.

By Its Size I Could Not Guess,
The Awesome Strength It Does Possess.

But Since I Fell Beneath Its Spell,
I’ve Wandered Through The Fires Of Hell.
Image Source

My Life Has Not Been Quite The Same,
Since I Chose To Play This Stupid Game.

It Rules My Mind For Hours On End,
A Fortune It Has Made Me Spend.

It Has Made Me Yell, Curse And Cry.
I Hate Myself And Want To Die.

It Promises A Thing Called Par,
If I Can Hit It straight And Far..

To Master Such A Tiny Ball,
Should Not Be Very Hard At All..

But My Desires The Ball Refuses,
And Does Exactly As It Chooses.

It Hooks And Slices, Dribbles And Dies,
And Even Disappears Before My Eyes.

Often It Will Have A Whim,
To Hit A Tree Or Take A Swim.

With Miles Of Grass On Which To Land,
It Finds A Tiny Patch Of Sand.

Then Has Me Offering Up My Soul,
If Only It Would Find The Hole.

It’s Made Me Whimper Like A Pup,
And Swear That I Will Give It Up..

And Take To Drink To Ease My Sorrow,
But The Ball Knows …. I’ll Be Back Tomorrow.

Via

Nobody Knows It But Me

There's a place that I travel
When I want to roam,
And nobody knows it but me

The roads don't go there
And the signs stay home
And nobody knows it but me

It's far far away
And way way afar
It's over the moon and the sea

And wherever you're going
That's wherever you are
And nobody knows it but me

-Patrick O'Leary


The Story behind the poem

The director was Eric Saarinen. The actress was photographer Sally Gall. James Garner recited the poem. Art Director Brad Neeley had the idea. We shot it in the Yukon and British Columbia. I’m the poet. Yes, it was the poem on that Chevy Tahoe commercial that came out in the fall of 2002. No, you didn't hear it when you were a child. Your Grandmother didn't read it to you. Or your Grandpa or your Dad. But I know what you mean: it was written to capture that childlike carefree sense of wonder and adventure. And Mr. Garner gave it a soothing sitting-on-your-poppa's-lap sort of feeling.

People loved the spot. They really loved the poem. They found it hauntingly familiar. Was is Robert Frost? Robert Louis Stevenson? Walt Whitman? They were amazed and skeptical to hear it was written by an advertising copywriter from Detroit. I got dozens of emails and letters and phone calls. So did GM. Newspapers were flooded with queries about the poem. Radio stations, too. For a few months it seemed that everyone in America was wondering about it. What happened next was weird in the extreme.

People made Christmas cards of the poem. People put it on their office walls. Sent it as a valentine. Insisted on House Silence whenever the commercial played. It gave a unique comfort to people. Cancer patients read it in the hospital. Lonely people found great solace in the words. A middle-school class memorized it and recited it. Dozens of discussion groups online chatted it up. A grammy-award-winning composer wrote a song to the lyrics. So did a bluegrass band. One woman did a beautiful cross stitch of the poem. It is on my office wall.

Today, some five years later I still get the occasional email about it. Last week a disabled woman from Texas emailed to ask if she could put the words on her headstone. It’s strange to be swept up in such a cultural phenomenon. It's very humbling to have moved so many so deeply.

p.o. 6/24/08 (Via)

Image Via

Redneck Love Poem

Susie Lee done fell in love,
she planned to marry Joe.
She was so-o-o happy 'bout it all,
she told her Pappy so.

Pappy told her, "Susie Gal,
you'll have to find another.
I'd just as soon yo' Ma don't know,
but Joe is yo' half brother."

So Susie put aside her Joe,
and planned to marry Will.
But after telling Pappy so,
he said, "there's trouble still!"

"You cannot marry Will, my gal,
and please don't tell yo' mother.
But Will and Joe, and several mo'
I know is yo' half brother."

But Ma knew and said, "my child,
just do what makes yo' happy.
Marry Will or marry Joe;
You ain't no kin to Pappy."