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Portmanteau


I'm back from AWP and then a short baby hiatus! The little guy is napping on his Boppy on my lap, so I'm going to catch up with some notes I made at AWP.

I ran into an old friend at the book fair, Alex Lumans, graduating soon from his MFA program. When we were in an undergrad poetry class together, he wrote a cool poem using the word portmanteau, which I'd never encountered before. It's actually a pretty common occurrance, a portmanteau is two words smushed together to make a new one that has some of the old meaning of the two words combined. Think Bennifer or Brangelina but with more linguistic substance.

Here's a cool site with a bunch of examples: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/portmant.htm

I'm especially intriqued by the Dormobile. I was disapointed to find out that this is a type of car/truck/van, not a mobile dorm, which would suck so bad that I love the idea. Would you have to find it every day when you come home from class? Imagine the dialogue..."oh shit, I'm going to be late to class because the f.ck.ng dorm parked on the far side of campus this morning."

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