Sunday Poetry XXXIX -- Robert Ripley and Poetry (KAY RYAN)

I'm about to go back to school.  Again.  Third time's a charm.  I hope.  The preparations of which have made it near impossible to maintain my once-steady stream--or flooding river, really--of posts and commentaries and questions.  Be that as it may, and trying to think of something for today's installment of Sunday Poetry, I remembered a silly verse I once read in the original Ripley's Believe It or Not--something about school and the futility of studying.  I can't remember the exact verse, and as the book is buried in a box somewhere out in the garage, yet unpacked, I took to Google and the great gaping expanse of the www.  I did not find what I was looking for, as is often the case, and as is as often or even oftener the case, found something even better: a poem from a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection by a poet, former poet laureate Kay Ryan, inspired by Ripley's reported oddities.  Here is the title work:

The Jam Jar Lifeboat 
invented in 1831 by a man named Bateman who 
insisted it was unsinkable, sank the first time it was tested. 
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! 
It was quixotic to think
the cold grey North Atlantic
might be survived in a jam jar boat.
It is not enough that one of something
can be made to float with its lid sealed tight.
One rat might survive one night
on a single treadmill bottle
but even that would be a battle.
Bateman always hated how small truths
extrapolated so poorly. He came up with
really good small ones almost hourly.

Sunday Poetry XIII -- THE LONGEST WORD, whose poetic value is debatable

According to my falling-apart, 1946 edition of Ripley's Believe it or Not, the longest word in the English language is this:

orniscopytheobibliopsychocrystarroscioaerogenethliometeoroaustrohieroanthropoichthyopyrosiderochpnomyoalectryoophiobotanopegohydrorhabdocrithoaleuroalphitohalomolybdoclerobeioaxinocoscinodactyliogeolithopessopsephocatoptrotephraoneirochiroonychodactyloarithstichooxogeloscogastrogyrocerobletonocenoscapulinaniac*

According to Mr. Ripley:

"The long word of 310 letters was used as a means of demonstrating: 1.  The extent to which even the English language is capable of forming enormous word monsters, and, 2.  The whole field of superstitious divinatory practices which are as old as humanity.


"The literal translation of the long word is 'A deluded human who practices divination or forecasting by means of phenomena, interpretation of acts or other manifestations related to the following animate or inanimate objects and appearances: birds, oracles, Bible, ghosts, crystal gazing, shadows, air appearances, birth, stars, meteors, winds, sacrificial appearances, entrails of humans and fishes, fire, red-hot irons, altar smoke, mice, grain picking by rooster, snakes, herbs, fountains, water, wands, dough, meal, barley, salt, lead, dice, arrows, hatchet balance, sieve, ring suspension, random dots, precious stones, pebbles, pebble heaps, mirrors, ash writing, dreams, palmistry, nail rays, finger rings, numbers, book passages, name letterings, laughing manners, ventriloquism, circle walking, wax, susceptibility to hidden springs, wine, and shoulder blades.'


"Various monastic authors of the Middle Ages writing on the subject of human superstition have actually used such a long word with a slightly varying sequence of items."

***

Wikipedia disagrees: here.

While my contemporary edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has a nicely assembled discussion on the subject of long words, the online 1898 edition is yet informative (here).

However, longestwordinenglish.wordpress.com, pretty much wipes out Mr. Ripley's claim, though it's claim as a "real" word is more dubious that Ripley's.  Of course if we can just jam together a bunch of Latin roots and call it a word, why not a bunch of English bits and pieces?  Is there a difference?

And really, what's the point?  I mean, aside from the utter fun factor!  If a "word" is never going to be used aside from the moment of its conception, then what is it really?

***

* Somehow (go figure) there are 311 letters in my transcription of the word.  Not that I'm particularly worried about it.  longestwords.wordpress.com seems to agree with me (here).

*