Paraphrases from The Anthologist, a novel by Nicholson Baker  Pronounce poem as pome or poe-im or poe-em--it's a Greek word that's had the end chopped off  it.  Children cry in duple meter.  I call a poem that doesn't rhyme a plum, and we who write and publish them are plummets or plummers.  Free-verse poetry is prose in slow motion.  NOTE:  In the book, Nicholson Baker includes several poem fragments set to melodies with an unusual mix of triplets and duplets.

Free verse poems will have no set meter, which is the rhythm of the words, no rhyme scheme, or any particular structure.  Some poets would find this liberating, being able to whimsically change your mind, while others feel like they could not do a good job in that manner.  Robert Frost commented that writing free verse was like "playing tennis without a net."  Find examples of free-verse poetry at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-free-verse-poems.html

The English spelling system is famous for not making sense.  The phonetic ideal of having each letter represent exactly one sound, and each sound represented by exactly one letter, is impossible when English has about 45 sounds, or phonemes, and only 26 letters to represent them.  But more than that, any language that has been written for a long enough time will have spellings that haven’t caught up with modern pronunciations, because pronunciations change.  English has been written for about 1,300 years, which is plenty of time for these mismatches to accumulate.  One of the more frustrating signs of these spelling mismatches is English’s abundance of silent letters.  With a conservative definition of silent letter, more than half of the letters of our alphabet are silent in at least some words.  In alphabetical order, they are B, D, E, G, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, W, X, and Z.  Neal Whitman  Find the story behind silent letters at http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/why-english-has-words-with-silent-letters  A few words with a silent H are:  ghost, heir, honest, hour, what, and whether.  Words with G and H both silent are:  dough, light, and tough.

Nouns can be abstract or concrete.  Concrete nouns are tangible and you can experience them with your five senses.  Abstract nouns refer to intangible things, like feelings, ideals, concepts and qualities.  Find examples of abstract nouns, including their use in in sentences and quotes at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-abstract-nouns.html

In 1983, Andy Warhol was commissioned by his friend and publisher Ron Feldman and his wife Freyda to create the series of ten endangered species to raise environmental consciousness.  Both Freyda and Ronald were celebrated political activists and active philanthropists.  Warhol enjoyed working on this project and fondly referred to this series as his “Animals in Makeup,” regarding to the bold pop colors he employes, to portray the animals as large than life.  In 1986, Warhol was commissioned again to do a series of animals in danger of extinction, this time it was illustrations for the book Vanishing Animals by Kurt Benirschke.  See all ten of the 1983 screenprints at http://revolverwarholgallery.com/portfolio/endangered-species-full-suite-of-10-works/

Monobloc may refer to:  Monobloc engine, an internal combustion engine with the cylinder head and block formed as one unit; Monobloc (chair), a type of light-weight chair made of one-piece plastic; Monobloc (film), a 2005 Argentine film; Monoblock LNB, a type of low-noise block downconverter.  In photography, another name for a monolight, a type of electronic flash with the electronics in the head, as opposed to a pack-and-head system. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monobloc  See also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monobloc

The buildings and architecture of Bath, a city in Somerset in the south west of England, reveal significant examples of the architecture of England, from the Roman Baths to the present day. The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, largely because of its architectural history and the way in which the city landscape draws together public and private buildings and spaces.  It is the only entire city in Britain to achieve World Heritage status, and is a popular tourist destination.  Important buildings include the Roman Baths; neoclassical architect Robert Adam's Pulteney Bridge, based on an unused design for the Rialto Bridge in Venice; and Bath Abbey in the city centre, founded in 1499 on the site of an 8th-century church.  Of equal importance are the residential buildings designed and built into boulevards and crescents by the Georgian architects John Wood, the Elder and his son John Wood, the Younger--well-known examples being the Royal Crescent, built around 1770, and The Circus, built around 1760, where each of the three curved segments faces one of the entrances, ensuring that there is always a classical facade facing the entering visitor.  Most of Bath's buildings are made from the local, golden-coloured, Bath Stone.  The dominant architectural style is Georgian, which evolved from the Palladian revival style that became popular in the early 18th century.  The city became a fashionable and popular spa and social centre during the 18th century.  Based initially around its hot springs, this led to a demand for substantial homes and guest houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buildings_and_architecture_of_Bath

Aetna now joins UnitedHealth, Humana and others insurers in scaling back their involvement in healthcare exchanges.  “Aetna’s decision has a direct effect on competition in many parts of the country and it’s a bit of a red flag for the future,” said Larry Levitt with the Kaiser Family Foundation.  While fewer choices won’t raise prices for most consumers, the quality of the coverage could slip.  Insurers say there aren’t enough healthy people who have enrolled in the exchanges to cover the cost of the sick.  Aetna said it had lost $430 million since 2014.  Obamacare critics see this as a sign that the end of the health reform law is near.  But John Bertko, chief actuary with the exchange, said this has more to do with business than politics.  “Plans who have been in the market have learned some tough lessons,” said Bertko.  The problem, he said, is big insurers offered too much at first and they didn’t realize the game has changed.  “Most but not all of the big five are incompetent at creating good, narrow networks,” he said.  Bertko said 11 plans in California are all either making money or close to breaking even.  California’s experience appears to square with accounts that smaller insurers familiar with low-income patients and offer narrow groups of physicians and hospitals are making a go on the exchanges.  Since Obamacare has always been controversial, it’s hard to figure out the difference between the hype, the hate and the hope.  Certainly, enrollment lags well behind expectations at this point, reducing the margins on this business.  Congress hasn’t helped either by limiting subsidies to help insurers absorb losses.  See http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160602/NEWS/160609973 Dan Gorenstein  http://www.marketplace.org/2016/08/16/health-care/aetna-exchanges

Bill Clinton and Melania Trump have submitted cookie recipes for Family Circle magazine's Presidential Cookie Poll, where readers pick between the two cookie recipes.  The poll, which has been held during the fall of every general election year since 1992.  Clinton submitted the family's chocolate chip cookies made with old-fashioned oats.  Trump  submitted star cookies made with egg yolks and sour cream.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/politics/bill-clinton-melania-trump-cookie-recipe/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1515  August 19, 2016  On this date in 1848, the New York Herald broke the news to the East Coast of the gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).  On this date in 1858, Jules Janssen discovered Helium during a solar eclipse.  Word of the Day  ylem  noun  (astronomy, cosmology, physics, now chiefly historical)  In the Big Bang theory, the hot and dense plasma which made up the cosmos at the time of recombination in an early stage of its expansion and cooling, when the first atoms formed and photons decoupled.  The ylem is regarded as the source of the cosmic microwave background.  George Gamow, who co-authored the 1948 paper with Ralph Asher Alpher and Hans Bethe which first used the term ylem in this context, died on August 19, 1968.