The Diction of Autumn

Today's syntax quiz was brought to you by 7th hour today! I hope you like armadillos!

Diction week begins with Rossetti's "A Birthday," celebrity quotes, autumnal quotes, and the mock heroic "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat." From our discussions, our close readings, and our group presentations, you have witnessed the multitude of ways to describe and analyze diction. The "fire" motif into colors and ashes was a shining moment of strong presentations in first hour! And, the definite and indefinite diction analysis of Bradbury was an example of higher level thinking in seventh hour! And, the harmonise/hectic juxtaposition of first and second hour added to the analysis of nature and humanity's impact on it.

Here are the quotes from today in case you would like to read them again:

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.” ―  Yoko Ono

“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!” ― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841]”  ― George Eliot

“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.” - Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

“He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.

But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.

There would be no spring. - Ray Bradbury, After Midnight