The Book Nook Chronicles

A poem inspired by Ilan Stavans’ The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, 
it's good enough for the children of Texas!
Everyone's favorite "second" language
English is destine to be the language of the world.

Dictionary, n. a malevolent literary device 
for cramping the growth of a language
and making it hard and inelastic.
A Southern softness,
A Yankee drawl,
A Western burr,
Anglo-Saxons relapsed into semi-barbarism.

Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!

I think a lot of people talk to much.
Almost everyone calls Frankenstein the monster
rather than the the man who made the monster,
even though Mary Shelley wrote it the other way.
An author can fool himself in his own language.

(SNOOTitude runs in families.)