SONG
1 Even little cuckoos in their clocks, do it. Let’s fall in love. –Cole Porter
2 We kissed in a field of white and stars fell on Alabama, last night. –Mitchell Parish
3 Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. –McCartney
4 I was dancin’ since I was eight. Is it wrong to dance so late? –T. Rex
5 Will you miss me, Miss Misery? –Elliott Smith
6 Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in –Cohen
7 Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see. –Newton
8 Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. –anonymous
9 This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. –anonymous
10 Hear that lonesome whipporwill? He sounds too sad to fly. The midnight train is whining low. I’m so lonesome I could cry. –Hank Williams
11 Bound for a star by an ocean, you’re so very lonely, you’re two thousand light years from home. –Rolling Stones
12 Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. –Sinatra
13 Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. –Bowie
14 Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. –Paul Simon
15 Send my credentials to the house of detention. –The Doors
16 O say does that star spangled banner yet wave—o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? –F. Scott Key
POETRY
1 Soft went the music the soft air along –Keats
2 For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons; I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. –Eliot
3 Let the more loving one be me. –Auden
4 Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. –Dickinson
5 Death, be not proud –Donne
6 I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow –Roethke
7 He who mocks the infant’s faith Shall be mocked in age & death –Blake
8 There’s nothing worse than too late –Bukowski
9 Two road diverged in a wood and I—took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. –Frost
10 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying. –Tennyson
11 Green dells that into silence stretch away –C. Matthews
12 She spoke not—but, so richly fraught with language are her glance and smile, that when the curtain fell, I thought She had been talking all the while. –Fanny Osgood
13 As if the star which made her forehead bright Had burst and filled the lake with light –Read
14 And birds and streams with liquid lull Have made the stillness beautiful –Amelia Welby
15 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. –Barrett
16 So we’ll go no more a roving, So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. –Byron
FILM
1 “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” –Gone with the Wind
2 “What seems to be the problem? Death.” –Blade Runner
3 “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” –Godfather
4 “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” –Chinatown
5 “You’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?” –Sudden Impact
6 “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” –Wizard of Oz
7 “I coulda been a contender.” –On The Waterfront
8 “Bond. James Bond.” –Dr. No
9 “Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By.” –Casablanca
10 “I want to be alone.” –Grand Hotel
11 “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.” –Dracula
12 “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” –Jaws
13 “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” –Streetcar Named Desire
14 “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” –Hamlet
15 “Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” –King Kong
16 “Elementary, my dear Watson!” –Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
PROSE
1 During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing along on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. –Poe
2 Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. –Nabokov
3 It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. –Orwell
4 And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F.Scott Fitzgerald
5 In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. –Hemingway
6 Justice?—You get justice in the next world; in this world you have the law. –Gaddis
7 The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. –S. Crane
8 She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom. –Hawthorne
9 A loving heart is the truest wisdom. –Dickens
10 He kissed her, and she quivered as if she were being destroyed, shattered. –D.H. Lawrence
11 When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him. –Swift
12 The loss of one eye does not destroy the vision. The deafness of one ear does not wholly deprive us of hearing. In the same manner Tiedman reports the case of a madman, whose disease was confined to one side of his head, the patient having the power to perceive his own malady, with the unimpaired faculties of the other side. –Mrs. L. Miles
13 Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much. –Oscar Wilde
14 A dinner party is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism. Conversation depends on how much you take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their games out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you see; but Red says, Mate in six moves;—White looks, —nods;—the game is over. –Oliver Wendell Holmes
15 I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. –M. L. King
16 Make America great again. –Donald Trump
Scarriet is proud to unveil another annual (is it our eighth one already?) March Madness Poetry Tournament—in the past, we have used Best American Poetry poems, contemporary poets’ lines, aesthetic philosophy, and now we have seized the populist moment by presenting what we call a “Greatest Words” contest. Popular speech has its own reason for existing, and the poetry (and wit) is in the brevity, obviously, but also we note that words are so adept at pointing to other things; for instance, “Make America Great Again,” (too controversial?) has worlds of meaning within it—we can ask, “What is America?” and “what does it mean to make America great, and “great again?” etc etc One does not have to see this as a ‘pro-Trump’ entry—though an entry, nonetheless.
Let the games begin!
