Author: David Wright

What Trees Might Recount

SUGAR sap pressure ebbing, yet bare arms stay held aloft in winter’s cold.
KNEED with branch knots, gnarled giant stands firm in time.
ELDER, awaiting springs, you watched our generations as they
AROSE, then fell. If you could spread our tales like a rustling canopy!

Tulip Mania

NERVE, you’ve gotta keep it,
HEADY times for savvy investor,
TULIP bulbs booming.
STRAP in, no way to lose..

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania, which is where the image and quote below are from:

A tulip bulb is supposed to have traded for all the above combined during the mania

Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in 1634 and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history. In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world’s leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720. The term “tulip mania” is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.

A Blow

WOUND came as blow to the shoulder, an alien momentum; he
SWORE, was spun off path into jungle’s thicket. Stumble becomes
ASSET. More shots ring out, he now hidden from view. He looks up:
MANGO, red, lush, hanging from branch above. Then sees blood blossom on his shirt.

Cloth Trade

CLOTH merchant sets up in the marketplace,
PLUCKs brocades, songkets, chenilles from wrappings.
WALTZ of barter, point, counter-point above stitch and counter-stitch.
BETEL chewers watch, mull mystery: woven treasures having come a thousand leagues.

Quordle Word Stats!

I recently completed uploading all my Quordle poems since I started (April 23, 2022). Since I covered every day, this also gave me the opportunity to generate a “words” post for every day since then through yesterday’s words (Jan 23, 2022), which is 9 month’s worth of words. See this category for the words posts. That means we now have a record of all the words that have come up so far. I put the data in a spreadsheet, for those who are interested. Available here.

We’ve had :

  • 1104 words altogether (at four a day)
  • 4 occurences of one word, “DRIER”–it occurred on 4 separate days, so far.
  • 3 occurrences each of nine words, including a personal favorite, “DUCHY”, but also “WRECK”, “POUND”, “MAGMA” “KNOCK”, “CLOSE”, “CIRCA”, “BURST”, “BEGIN”.
  • 2 occurrences each of 119 words.
  • 1 unique occurrence of 835 words–these have only appeared once so far.

Strong Verb

‘WOKEN’, Old English still pulses in your shift from ‘wake’,
SCALE of inflection makes you a relic among verbs.
BLUFF their way past you, modern speakers do,
FLING ‘awakened’ about, steer clear of queasy changes in the stem.

No Antidote

DRUID with all his lore, in moment’s distraction tastes
CRUELty of creation’s estate. Fangs sink into arm,
SWELL begins in instant, time stopping on an edge. He watches
SNAKE wriggle away. Sometimes, creation’s dispensary holds poison only, no antidote upon its shelves.

Tag your favorites

This is the rare non Quordle poem post. I have been gradually transferring my Quordle poems from Twitter to here (my “back-catalog”; I’ve only 53 days left that have not been transferred, spanning from when I started in April last year till now). This also means we will have documented the full set of Quordle words for each day starting from them–I’ve been doing those as I go.

In any case, I’m finding that I actually like some of mine in a more permanent way, so I have been tagging them with a tag “ohthatwright-fav”, or https://dailyquordlepoem.com/tag/ohthatwright-fav/.

The point in mentioning this is to say:

if you’d like to tag your own favorites, please do! I think everyone can create a tag, but if you cannot, just let me know somehow, and I will create a tag of your choosing for you.

Also, if there is any help you wish with features of WordPress, please let me know. I can quickly orient you on how to do things. It’s a much better long term home for your creations, because it has so many more features.

For example, did you know we have a search box at the bottom of the page?

Cheers, and I would love for others to use tags to point out your poems that stood out to you!

Make it Cool

GLEAM of idea strikes inventors brain.
BLUNT critiques have brought near surrender,
SNIDE jests have robbed his joy. Yet
RETRY he will. Finally make the Segway cool.