Emma Edits

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/tabula-rasa-volume-four

Tabula Rasa: Volume Four A project meant not to end.

Every Poem Was a Secret
by Edward Hirsch
Every poem was a secret
struggle with himself,
every secret was a struggle,
a handwritten scrawl,
something joyous
or terrible,
a fragmentary
blood-soaked message
wrenched out of his body,
a longing for
some impossible harmony
tucked into a bottle
and tossed off the side of a cliff.
Reckless love poems, shocked elegies
drafted against death
looking for God—
some of them shattered
in desperation
on the rocks below,
but others, like this one,
bobbed away
on surging blue waves
for someone to find them.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/comma-queen/grammar-nerd-heaven

Grammar-Nerd Heaven A new exhibit showcases the surprisingly contentious history of English grammar books.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/magazine/the-case-for-semicolons.html

The Case for Semicolons There are very few opportunities in life to have it both ways; semicolons are the rare instance in which you can; there is absolutely no downside.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/good-writing-irina-dumitrescu-book-review/

How to write well - Irina Dumitrescu - Book review -The TLS In high school a close friend told me about a lesson her father had received when he was learning to write in English. Any essay could be improved by the

Is Line Editing a Lost Art? “Extraneous baggage”—that was how Albert Erskine, line editor of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, described slow sections of the submitted manuscript. McCarthy listened. He spent months revising and cond…

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/style/em-dash-punctuation.html

The Em Dash Divides Why do people care so much about a piece of — no offense — punctuation?

Permanently by Kenneth Koch

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark rainy
day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective
earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill
has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the
boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

that's kinda cool