{"id":9313,"date":"2014-10-13T13:40:36","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T20:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=9313"},"modified":"2014-10-13T13:41:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T20:41:25","slug":"the-poets-convenience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/13\/the-poets-convenience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poet&#8217;s Convenience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-13-16.31.02.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9314\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-13-16.31.02.png\" alt=\"Tesdorpf, 1754\" width=\"651\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-13-16.31.02.png 651w, http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-13-16.31.02-300x189.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 651px) 100vw, 651px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 1754, the L\u00fcbeck merchant P.H. Tesdorpf published his poem &#8220;An Attempt at Describing\u00a0the Most Beautiful and Nearly the Smallest of All Birds, Which Is Known as the Colibrit.&#8221; The poem is everything its title promises, but Tesdorpf&#8217;s annotations offer the occasional bit of comic relief.<\/p>\n<p>Take this footnote, for example, provided as\u00a0explication of the strophe in which the poet describes the hummingbird&#8217;s valiant defense of its nest:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Should anyone find objectionable the comparison between the bird&#8217;s bill [Schnabel] and a fork [Gabel], I would counter by observing that when the birds mean to strike or stab in anger, they often open the bill, thus doubling its capacity to puncture, and consequently transform it into what is essentially a fork. Not to mention the difficult of finding a rhyme for the unavoidable word &#8220;Schnabel.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now there&#8217;s a practical-minded poetaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1754, the L\u00fcbeck merchant P.H. Tesdorpf published his poem &#8220;An Attempt at Describing\u00a0the Most Beautiful and Nearly the Smallest of All Birds, Which Is Known as the Colibrit.&#8221; The poem is everything its title promises, but Tesdorpf&#8217;s annotations offer the occasional bit of comic relief. Take this footnote, for example, provided as\u00a0explication of the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/13\/the-poets-convenience\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Poet&#8217;s Convenience&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[83,299,298,257,300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9316,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions\/9316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}