Poets Laureate and Poetry Brothels - 24 Aug. 2009

[This episode first aired May 23, 2009.]<br/><br/>For 341 years, the poets laureate of Britain have all been male. That just changed with the appointment of Britain's new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Her work has been described as 'dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life.' The hosts discuss Duffy's oddly jarring and sensuous poetry. Also this week, they talk about whether it's ever correct to use the word 'troop' to mean an individual person, and whether the word 'literally' is too often used figuratively, as in 'He literally glowed'?<br/><br/>Martha reads Carol Ann Duffy's poem, 'Glad,' which can be found here <http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/05/04/carol-ann-duffy-s-poems-for-children-115875-21330656/> along with several others.<br/><br/>'You look like the wreck of the Hesperus!' It means you look 'disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.' It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of schoolchildren familiar with this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about a ship in a storm-tossed sea. Here's an early edition <http://books.google.com/books?id=MIAUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=wreck+of+the+hesperus&ei=-QYSStXYNoHgkwT8uMHcCQ#PPP1,M1> of the poem, along with some splendid old-fashioned illustrations.<br/><br/>If a Scotsman says he 'takes a scunner' to something, he means it gives him a feeling of loathing or revulsion. Grant and Martha discuss this term's possible origins. For more about the word scunner, check out the 'Dictionary of the Scots Language' <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/getent4.php?headerframe=yes&query=scunner&sset=1&fset=20&printset=20&searchtype=full&dregion=form&dtext=all>.<br/><br/>Grant reads another poem by Carol Ann Duffy, 'Valentine' <http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Carol_Ann_Duffy/9274>.<br/><br/>Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a quiz called 'States of MIND,' in which the answers are words formed by combining the postal abbreviations of states. Try this clue: 'A word that refers to you