Dear Aaron,<\/p>\n
I am hoping you can answer a quick poetry question for me. In the following poem by John Updike, what do you think “blither” means?<\/p>\n
TO A WELL-CONNECTED MOUSE
\n(Upon reading of the genetic closeness of mice and men.) <\/p>\n
Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
\nBraw science says that at the leastie
\nWe share full ninety-nine per cent
\nO’ genes, where’ere the odd ane went. <\/p>\n
O nibblin’, pink-tail’d, bright-ee’d sir,
\nWe hail frae ane sma’ fearful blur
\n‘Neath dinorsaur feet, lang syne-
\nNa mair be pestie, cousin mine. <\/p>\n
Stay oot my larder, oot my traps
\nAn’ they’ll snap softer doon, p’rhaps,
\nFor theft and murther blither go
\nWhen a’s i’ th’ family, bro’ and bro’. <\/p>\n
Thank you, Dear Amy,<\/p>\n Updike is imitating Robert Burns<\/a> here, so first I go to the Scots dictionary<\/a> to find that “braw” is Scots for “fine.” This helps me understand the poem but does not answer your question. “Blither” is not a Scots word, but it is an English word, with two meanings. Usually it is a verb, but as a verb it makes no sense in the poem. It is also a comparative adjective, meaning “more blithe,” and this second sense clears the matter up. The last two lines mean: “theft (by the mouse) and murder (by the poet) are cheerier affairs when they’re kept in the family.” Unfortunately “blither,” following “murther” directly, sounds far more natural with a short than a long i, which compounds the difficulty.<\/p>\n There is a similar problem in one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “Farther in summer than the birds,”<\/a> which has a line beginning “Antiquest felt at noon.” She means “more antique,” but many, many readers have read the word as “anti-quest.”<\/p>\n Pedantically yours,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Aaron, I am hoping you can answer a quick poetry question for me. In the following poem by John Updike, what do you think “blither” means? TO A WELL-CONNECTED MOUSE (Upon reading of the genetic closeness of mice and men.) Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, Braw science says that at the leastie We share […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAmy Greenwood<\/a><\/p>\n