Something a little more light hearted for today.

I know lots of men who are in love and lots of men who are married and lots of men who are both,
And to fall out with their loved ones is what all of them are most loth.
They are conciliatory at every opportunity,
Because all they want is serenity and a certain amount of impunity.
Yes, many the swain who has finally admitted that the earth is flat
Simply to sidestep a spat,
Many the masculine Positively or Absolutely which has been diluted to an If
Simply to avert a tiff,
Many the two-fisted executive whose domestic conversation is limited to a tactfully interpolated Yes,
And then he is amazed to find that he is being raked backwards over a bed of coals nevertheless.
These misguided fellows are under the impression that it takes two to make a quarrel, that you can sidestep a crisis by nonaggression and nonresistance,
Instead of removing yourself to a discreet distance.
Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi:
Consider the Empire and Gandhi.
Silence is golden, but sometimes invisibility is golder,
Because loved ones may not be able to make bricks without straw but often they don't need any straw to manufacture a bone to pick or blood in their eye or a chip for their soft white shoulder.
It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral:
In real life it takes only one to make a quarrel.

Ogden Nash

Here are some things I love about this poem: the way he plays with rhyme; the way he uses absurd images (consider the Empire and Gandhi!); the way he overrides all the rules of rhythm and metre; the underlying observation!

How do you read poems? Skimming them with your eyes, or slowly with your lips? I think poems have to be read aloud (you may want to wait until you're on your own to do this, at least at first). Keep trying until you feel the rhythm of the poem. Try different speeds until it feels right - slow enough to hear the sounds and linger on the meaning, but fast enough to keep the forward movement of the rhyme and rhythm. Have fun with it!

So, I've almost finished writing my paper analysing James Jordan's hermeneutic of interpretive maximalism. Obviously my conclusion will be that this is the best thing since sliced bread.

But I feel a paper on a subject like this deserves a better title than 'A Critical Analysis of James B. Jordan's Hermeneutics'. So all suggestions gratefully received.

Marc?