{"id":273,"date":"2007-02-07T11:08:49","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T17:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2007\/02\/07\/good-words-to-you\/"},"modified":"2007-02-08T01:18:09","modified_gmt":"2007-02-08T07:18:09","slug":"good-words-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/good-words-to-you\/","title":{"rendered":"“Good Words to You”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It’s the outcue for the audio column on NPR’s Morning Edition<\/i> that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper published a book of his, by that title. It’s in the same warm memory set as hearing Ellen Gilchrist, in the same years and the same time of day.<\/p>\n

“Outcue.” The spellcheck dings it, and it’s not in Webster’s New World, but from my time in radio I can attest it’s real. It is a term for the phrase a broadcast journalist uses, with some consistency, that flags the producer at the home studio to open the mike for the anchor to resume. “Reporting from Fayetteville, this is Ben Pollock.” “And that’s the way it is.” Ciardi might have said if he lived into the Clinton presidential years, “Yes, that’s what ‘is’ is. This is John Ciardi, wishing Good Words to You.”<\/p>\n

On the night stand is Let Me Finish<\/i> by Roger Angell (Harcourt, 2006). It’s a collection of reminiscences, more than a well-transitioned memoir. It’s the first book in a long time that has challenged me to hit the dictionary. Angell is not trying to be Safire, nor is he one to prefer the ol’ 25-cent words over nickel ones. He simply is addressing general topics in a sophisticated way. Also, people once used larger words. I’m also working on Team of Rivals<\/i> by Doris Kearns Goodwin, where the self-educated Abe Lincoln, speaking to the commonest of common folk, used a vocabulary that would stump today’s wannabe gang-banger. It’s fun to learn something new.<\/p>\n

Angell is best known for magazine articles on baseball, but he’s been a longtime writer and editor at The New Yorker.<\/i> Aha! He is the son of noted editor Katherine Angell and stepson of E.B. White. Aha aha! Big words. No, “Andy” White does not approve of big words in his Elements of Style.<\/i> But if you read his smooth essays elsewhere, Mr. White used a nice vocabulary well.<\/p>\n

Riposte. Persiflage. Bushwa. Purdah. These are Angell’s words that stumped me. Here’s what they mean. Sharp retort. Frivolous writing or speaking. Nonsense. Secluding women from the outside world.<\/p>\n

Let’s try these words out: A clever riposte is impossible to the president’s response of persiflage when asked about oppression by purdah. Bushwa, all agree.<\/p>\n

Commonplace book. I know this one. I should post mine, but am not sure of the best format. After all, it’s not a book, and these days not commonplace either. Reading someone’s commonplace book is a cross between checking out a person’s book, video or audio collection, and out-and-out snooping in a diary. It’s a collection of a person’s favorite sayings, maxims, quotes of others that ring true, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

A small sample<\/a> has been on my site for a long time.<\/p>\n

Here is an addition for mine, from Angell’s book. He recalls editing a piece by fellow New Yorker<\/i> staffer William Maxwell, a novelist who edited Cheever and Welty, among others. Here’s why: Maxwell says after Angell gives up trying to fix one of his sentences: “I don’t want to be too<\/i> clear.”<\/p>\n

Amen, brother. -30- <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It’s the outcue for the audio column on NPR’s Morning Edition that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper published a book of his, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5053,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2015\/01\/losing-miller-williams\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":0},"title":"Losing My Neighbor Miller Williams","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Of course I'd known of him, Miller Williams. In the 1990s, living in Little Rock, I was relearning how to read verse. He was an Arkansas poetry icon, along with Maya Angelou and John Gould Fletcher. We claim a good share of songwriters as well. Miller died Jan. 1, 2015,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The documentary series \"Men & Women of Distinction\" of the Arkansas Educational Television Network featured poet Miller Williams. The half-hour video was premiered in November 2010 at the University of Arkansas Global Campus auditorium in Fayetteville. Afterward, Williams was congratulated during a reception and posed for pictures. Here, Ben Pollock (from left), Christy Pollock, Miller Williams, Crescent Dragonwagon and Amy Wilson. Photo by Dwain Cromwell","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Miller-Williams-Crescent-AmyLou-Pollocks-by-Cromwell-1110-1000x750-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8334,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2026\/03\/rebels-causes\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":1},"title":"Rebel with a Load of Causes","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 24, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"An Editor\u2019s Note For all my love of words, I'm lousy at protest signs. Six maybe eight words is perfect. Pickets are a lot like billboards. You're driving by, so highway ads need to be sparse for comprehension. That's the same with demonstrations, where picketers stand on a sidewalk as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Marlon Brando's character Johnny rode a 1950 Triumph 6T 650cc Thunderbird motorcycle, like this, in 1953's \"The Wild One.\"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Triumph-6T-650cc-Thunderbird-1950-16x9-640x360-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Triumph-6T-650cc-Thunderbird-1950-16x9-640x360-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Triumph-6T-650cc-Thunderbird-1950-16x9-640x360-1.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":294,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/03\/unprepossessiveness\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":2},"title":"Unprepossessiveness","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY, Monday July 2, 2007, hypothetically -- The Arkansas State Police arrested the executive editors, managing editors and editorial page editors of two prominent newspapers at 11 this morning, no one being in their offices before that. At 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the measure forbidding the spelling of the possessive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2003\/12\/blair-flare-fair\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":3},"title":"Blair flare fair","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 22, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Monday, Dec. 22, 2003. Let's look at plagiarism, one of journalism's big topics in 2003, culminating in the revelations around Jayson Blair. Plain definition is that plagiarism is thievery, the taking of others' words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs -- the ideas of others -- as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":244,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/11\/you-dont-say\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":4},"title":"You Don’t Say","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Two people on Thursday asked me the same question, not just topic but exact words. If I had a more public job -- not a computer-glazed copy editor -- or had more friends with whom I had more frequent contact, getting the same question twice in one day might be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/07\/deathly-hallowed-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":273,"position":5},"title":"Deathly Hallowed Words","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"You can read here the last, first: He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}