{"id":638,"date":"2011-01-25T14:33:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T19:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=638"},"modified":"2011-02-15T20:23:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T01:23:53","slug":"response-to-a-nyt-editorial-about-robert-burns-first-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Response to a NYT Editorial about Robert Burns (first version)"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYT Robert Burns Editorial<\/a><\/p>\n

I will agree it’s fun to give haggis a little kick in the hurdies* from time to time.\u00a0 A sausage made from chopped and cooked sheep’s lung, kidney and heart (with onions, salt, pepper, suet and oats), stuffed inside a sheep’s stomach which is then boiled for three hours sounds pretty horrible, definitely an acquired taste.\u00a0 I wish the NYT Editorial, A Night of Food and Song,<\/em> had not grouped Burns’ poems in the same category.<\/p>\n

I’m an American English speaker who likes Robert Burns works.\u00a0 I have read a couple Burns biographies, memorized a dozen of his poems, and have hosted a Burns supper each January for three years, now.\u00a0 I am a typical college-educated American adult with no special training in Scots dialect (or poetry in general for that matter).\u00a0 Though off-putting at first, with several re-readings and a glossary at hand, it didn’t take long to get the hang of Burns’ language.\u00a0 I can now read and enjoy Burns with relative ease.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I wish you had used the anniversary of Burns birth to encourage people to read the works of one of the great poets of the last several hundred years instead of writing them off as too difficult, full of “thorns and brambles.”\u00a0 Burns had a keen eye for the human condition.\u00a0 What he wrote about love and life, truth and hypocrisy, and so much more rings true today and is, even with some unfamiliar Scots terms, accessible.\u00a0 It’s one reason I hold a Burns Supper: to help friends and family become familiar with the life and work of this remarkable man.<\/p>\n

My suggestion?\u00a0 Don’t worry about developing a taste for haggis but instead, open a book of (or click a link to) Burns’ poems and songs.\u00a0 Spend a few minutes getting to know some of what he wrote.\u00a0 You’ll be surprised how easy it is, how worth it, and how few thorns and brambles there actually are.<\/p>\n

* Hurdies is Scots for buttocks.\u00a0 See Burns’ poem, “To a Haggis”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT Robert Burns Editorial I will agree it’s fun to give haggis a little kick in the hurdies* from time to time.\u00a0 A sausage made from chopped and cooked sheep’s lung, kidney and heart (with onions, salt, pepper, suet and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[34,30,52,1074,32,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7366,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/7366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}