A friend and colleague just sent me this link to chiasmus.com, a site dedicated to collecting and creating examples of chiasmus. There is a competition among site members, and one member was so entirely successful in creating examples of chiasmus, that he was removed from the competition and declared Master of Chiasmus.

Anyway, the site is good for perusing, and if you're of competitive bent, here's a place for you to pour your verbal skills into with another, perhaps more focused group of word hounds.

http://www.chiasmus.com/welcometochiasmus.shtml

Thanks for the reminder about this dubdub (I think we discussed it once but ages ago, prolly in relation to one of cara's much-loved terms of rhetoric!). Unless I am misreading it the competion closed some time back.

One of my favourite modern sages, dear old Mencken conjured this sharp chiastic observation:

"It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull."


I wonder where William James Lampton was describing when he wrote:

"Where the corn is full of kernels
And the colonels full of corn."

[exits USR, whistlin’]

The only example I can think of is of a true story of a famous writer (so famous his name escapes me...) who was asked to give a key note speech at a university.

Before delivering his oration he was handed a glass of fine whiskey and on taking the podium was given a rapturous applause.

When the clapping had died down he drew breath, took a swig from his glass and turned to the audience to say:

"I thank you for your welcome which was very cordial and your cordial, which is very welcome".

mav:
Alice found an old cookbook at a garage sale.The title is Southern Cook Book there are only 322 recipes in there,written in Charlotte, N. C. Compiled and Edited by: Lillie S. Lustig S Claire Sondhein. Sarah Rensel .Along with the recipes are sayings and a few poems scattered throughout.Thanks for sharing,Alice.

Kentucky, Oh Kentucky, How I love your classic shades,
Where flit the fairy figures of the star eyed Southern maids;
Where the butterflies are joying mid the blossoms newly born;
Where the corn is full of kernels, And the colonels full of corn!
http://trishgood1.tripod.com/favorites.html

I doubt he could have been referring to the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, though; it was founded in 1932 and Lampton died in 1917.
And, what's that R? [suspicious glower e]

:)

USR : Up Stage Right
DSL : Down Stage Left

I loved the corn keronels!

(edited, just to prove I still know my left from my right an' all!)

Upstage ME, willya? Awwright, I reckon you deserve that much...

Did anybody else find themselves all but singing that verse, as though it ought to be set to music?

Try singing it to the same tune as "When the frost is on the punkin' and the fodder's in the shock."