Dear Thanksgiving Feast

Dear Feast,

Oh glorious thanksgiving feast, how we always seem to meet around this time of year never ceases to bless my life, as well as my belly [apostrophe]. Your contents of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, rolls, jams, jellies, pies, and other deserts help me to remember that you are as numerous and diverse as the blessings that I have received from above [comparison]. I wonder to myself, without your annual appearance would I be as mindful of my blessings that I receive throughout the year? Most likely not [anthypophora]. You are the center of the time of thanksgiving, you bring together what is most important to me in family, friends, and God. If you weren't around perhaps those I cared to share this time of thanks with would not gather together at all like they currently do [antecedent/consequence]. Each year when we come together, those I love in toe, I realize that I have neglected and forgotten portions of your great display of carbohydrates and proteins from the previous year. This error on my part is once again where you, oh great feast, teach me another important lesson: though my blessings seem endless, they will come to an end if I forget that they are there [paradox].

Plastic Giving Thanks

Hurrah! [exclamatio] We come out of the cabinet, slightly stuck together from the lack of use of our slightly opaque bodies [personification]. We have waited all year for this day when we are allowed to rule the large cooling box [metonymy]. You fill us to the top with still-warm turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, vegetables, and stuffing [description]. Then you put on our matching hats [periphrasis] and set us to the side. We huddle on the counter in the neat rows you put us in, anxiously awaiting the next command from your ever graceful hands [synecdoche].

Oh blessed Thanksgiving! Oh blessed Thanksgiving [repetition]! How we love the amount of leftovers you produce! For only on you do we have a such a glorious purpose and meaning to our having been purchased [apostrophe]! For even when the day comes when these humans despise our continued existence, our never-ending contents, our endless supply of the remnants to the feast they once enjoyed [articulus] we shall know that we have a coveted spot in the refrigerator [prolepsis]! And when it comes our day of emptiness and we run out of food to provide, we will be allowed to rest and rejuvenate in the relaxing riptides of the dishwasher and then return and be restored to our rooms in the cabinet [alliteration]. When will we see the light of the kitchen again? Perhaps not for another year [subjectio].

Valves and Chambers

I have a love of valves and chambers [synecdoche].

I do not love them for what they are, but for what they do [contradiction]. They do not hesitate; they do not shrink; they do not fail [opposition]--rather, they guide tiny red cells on their path toward home [personification] consistently and diligently [antithesis]. With every thump-thump [onomatopoeia], they propel another fleet of oxygen-carrying vessels [paraphrasis] into the sea of vessels [antanaclasis]. And rarely do they ever, if they ever, for anyone, stop working [climax].

Yet sometimes they do stop working, like mini rubber toys that squeeze and then lose their spring [simile]. Still do I love them, and love them the more [parallelism], for a gentle prodding will not bring them back. It takes a shock of awesome power--a strike that burns, leaves a handprint of red, demands a reaction--to send them running back to their positions [appositio]. It is their difficulty, their absence, that makes the heart grow fonder [adage].

When they are not stopped, they are pools of swirling ocean spray, collecting life for others to peer at briefly before the next tide sweeps it away [metaphor]. Pulsing, breathing, swelling and stirring, they delight at the feel of thick liquid rushing along their paths [personification]. More than delight [degree]. They live for such a purpose.

They wouldn't mind then, would they, if we sent love their way [rhetorical question]? They're so tall at carrying blood [catachresis]--I figure it wouldn't be hard to add a drop of emotion to the mix. Carry our blood. Carry the lifeblood of humanity, too [paranomasia].

I will always have a love of valves and chambers.

Give Me Thanks

"O Blessed Bird," you cry, drawing near to me with your lips while your hearts are still far from me [imitation].  So easily you forgot to give—where are these, my blessings [anastrophe]?  A missing head, a lack of feet, and crispy skin bereft of plume.  This is not a gift, nor is it a way of thanking me [litotes]!  It is an outrage!  To slaughter me though I be innocent, then devour my flesh.  Such an act is a crime—a sin!  "To be used sparingly," and "only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine," God commands regarding this abominable act [epicrisis].  Yet here I stand, if I had the legs, preaching to you pudgy pigs [alliteration]!  Even so, I, myself, have been made fat with the stuffing plunged up my nether regions.  Disgusting!  Vile [exclamatio]!  And then you make me stew in the filthy drippings of my own corpse!  Wretched beings!  Would that I were returned to the Mother Earth and spared this ignominious fate [personification].  I am the dirt you till, the air you breathe, and the water you drink [prolepsis].  Wilt thou have mercy and finish the deed?  Why doth this fowl occurrence recur year after year [paronomasia]?  Is this not enough?  Must my kind never find rest [pysma]?  Brothers, sisters, those fallen prey to the ravenous beast known as man: cry not, for the end is soon upon us.  O sweet release [apostrophe]!  Come, gather us under thy wings!  

The Thankless Black Friday Ads

Calling, taunting--the unmarked pages lay neatly stacked, witholding the majesty of their secret deals (anastrophe).
Through your casual lounging, your quiet presence, your mysterious stare you reel in your victims and spoil their feelings of gratitude (articulus).
And while you innocently sit there, does your very existence not stand to contradict the very spirit of thanks which is being celebrated (interrogatio)?
You hypocrite! Impostor (exclamatio)!
Evil black and red ink cursing the whole land with a nasty spell of want and greed (hyperbole)!
My vision blurs over the red word sale, my thankful red heart tries to resist, my thankless hand draws a menacing circle with a red felt-tipped marker (traductio).

My eyes get green with great, guiltless greed (alliteration).
Another day of wanting.
Another turkey eaten in vain.
Another holiday hijacked (anaphora).
And will the madness ever stop? Of course not. We politely gave you one day and you greedily now take two (subjectio).
Black Friday, you should lose your association with Thanksgiving. Why? Because you contradict everything it stands for and impede on the thankful spirit that unites the nation. You transform once humble and domestic people into deranged, wild beasts that trample each other to satisfy the craving for a good deal (ratiocinatio).
I desire not your blood thirsty sales and late night shopping, but your offering of an evening Thanksgiving family tradition of marking your smooth pages (correctio).

Gratitude for the Glorious Game

Oh graceful pigskin [synecdoche], how I enjoy watching thee float over defenders, how I enjoy watching thee run through defenders [apostrophe and complexio]. Defenders [anadiplosis], you fools, who can stop Peyton Manning? [rhetorical question]. Touchdowns are all he throws [hyperbole]. My beloved Broncos, beam [alliteration] is all I do as I watch you gallop past the hash marks [metonymy]. How grateful I am for the day you win at the grandest stage of them all [periphrasis]. Then the world will know what I already know, that you are a raging bull [metaphor], with the rest of the league trampled beneath your feet. Oh how grateful I am to have witnessed you Manning up, and missed the Tebow trials [contention]. But should I be grateful? Should I praise this day? Naturally I suppose [ratiocinatio], for better now we are then ere before [anastrophe]. But what about Elway? Aye, a beast he was, but not a one can match what Manning has done [anthypophora]. The records quake as he thunders nearer and nearer [personification]. I wouldn’t want to bring attention the records he has broken, like career touchdowns, or yards in a season, [paralipsis] for any who watch can see his glory. And once they see his glory they too may be grateful for that pigskin.

Assignment: Rhetorically Amplifying Thanks

In our course on rhetoric and civilization, my students and I explored the medieval art of poetry and found in Geoffrey of Vinsauf's treatise (from about the year 1200) a familiar concept of amplification. This was varied a bit by the medieval setting and the focus on poetry, but is remarkably similar to methods outlined by Quintilian for the ancient Romans (as well as by others before and following him).

Medieval Christianity reconfigured classical rhetorical practices for its own purposes, as we have seen in the arts of letter writing and preaching. The use of amplification can simply become a mode of invention, as in classical times, but the topics about which Christians wrote and spoke were aligned with Christian belief. High among these is the concept of grace: Christians have traditionally "counted their blessings" in order to appreciate God's role in their lives.

At the occasion of Thanksgiving, I wish my students to practice this Christian content (the topic of thanks) while understanding medieval rhetoric through an exercise in amplification. In short, their assignment is to take a familiar and even hackneyed topic (giving thanks) and use the approaches taught in Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova to make this concept fresh and interesting: