Late Psalm

By Betsy Sholl

THE STUDY SMART SERIES, designed for students from junior high school through lifelong learning programs, teaches skills for research and note-taking, provides exercises to improve grammar, and reveals secrets for putting these skills together in great essays.
Millions of people want to learn to spell correctly, but they fear the task will be tedious and painful. Now, with the unique, logical approach presented in Spelling Simplified, anyone can become a skilled speller quickly and easily. Through the use of simple and effective exercises and tips, Spelling Simplified illustrates what many poor spellers forget that the way a word is spelled is closely related to the sound and meaning of that word.
Chapters devoted to syllables and stress, patterns in the language, consonant clusters, and vowel-consonant combinations are included, each complete with its own set of examples and exercises. From the simplest root words through longer words derived from foreign languages, Spelling Simplified guides you through basic techniques for learning how to hear a word, how to master irregularities, and how to form large words from smaller ones. Breezily written and easy to use, Spelling Simplified shows that mastering spelling cn be painless and even fun."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299198944
• ISBN13: 9780299198947
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Fully Human Poetry...

(Betsy read as part of the Writer's Voice Visiting Authors Series on March 30, 2007 along with Estha Weiner and Clint McCown. This is from my introduction to the event). Betsy Sholl's poems connect their powerful images beyond the page and deep into the senses. Small things burst suddenly into the momentous-a lobster in a tank to all our futile efforts to stave off mortality, or food that cannot be eaten by a sick friend confirming the fact of our temporary natures. Her poems carry a deceptive stillness, until suddenly you realize, carried along by the simple force of Betsy's careful choices, perfect construction, that the poem is spiraling upwards; both emotionally and poetically opening, drawing the reader further in. Her poetry speaks of opposition, of balancing. In "Messengers Falling to Our Aid," she spells this out with the words "...not all messengers pour out vials/of destruction..." While Betsy's poems identify with the damaged and desperate, she never condescends, never gives in to despair, always granting full humanity to the sick, the suffering, the dispossessed, whether human or beast. Betsy has an uncanny ability to place herself inside the suffering of others, without letting the poems become weighed down by it. She still is able to maintain the necessary distance to get the poem down, get it right. In the poem "Photographer," she writes of "...things as they are, not the myth." And with her poetry, there is the ever-questing to get at the root, at the essence of things. In "Boardwalk," she writes of our already being immersed in the world, and her poems are about doing so without giving in to the temptation to avert one's eyes, but to experience, fully, and record it all, honestly.

A Wonderful Discovery

I heard one of Besty Sholl's poems on NPR and was so impressed, I bought this book to read more of her work. What a wonderful discovery! Sholl's poetry is virtually flawless. Though her poems appear spontaneous and effortless, they are obviously written by a superb craftsperson. Poem after poem in this collection takes one's breath away. It is an intense read. In fact, Sholl's poems are so dense and so well crafted, I found myself needing to put the book down time and again to reflect on what I had just read. I liked this book so much, I introduced it to my poetry reading group. Each month, we read a collection of poetry by new and noted poets. The group unanimously found Sholl's work to be among the best we have read. There isn't a single weak poem in this entire collection. We found ourselves wondering why Sholl isn't more publicly known and even why she has not been nominated for or won a Pulitzer. She is an amazing and delightful discovery. I am glad that I have discovered Sholl's work and hope to see much more of it. Too bad I can only rate the book on a scale of 1-5. This book is most definitely a 10.

why Betsy Sholl is the only poet in my bookcase

To put my feelings very simply, let me quote Betsy in her tribute to Walt Whitman. Betsy is the "point guard, center and crowd all in one" in terms of the poet I need in my life. I am a writer in another discipline, so I choose influences carefully. Sometimes, we feel our own creative well running dry, and so I call on my old friend, Betsy Sholl, to give me the adjectives and verbs and nouns that I need to fill up my creativity again. In Late Psalm, she simply addresses my thoughts, puts them in a big box, wraps them with a bow, and they penetrate the universe. Consider these images: "Gray sky, the texture of dense feathers"...or "it's easy to be wilted by guilt or to rage at whoever made this place". Or sometimes Betsy gives us just a glance at what we need to see: "..everything dazzles--broken glass on the river bank, rain dimpling the sand.." But the bigger splendor with Late Psalm is the subject matter. Where do I go with Betsy in these conversations in my mind? The places she takes me is the geography of my soul that is filtered through hers. My special love is a poem Betsy wrote to our shared friend, Ruth Welting. The event was a tea; the conversation about a Germen word for longing that is not translatable. We left that tea, and we've left Ruth, or she's left us after a brief cancer battle. But Betsy took that moment, that slice of life, and here is a poem that invites every reader to the tea we shared with Ruth. This is what she does for me. She takes me where I need to go, and makes me better for the journey.