Richard Lederer, 1989

Richard Lederer, 1989
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1989 Richard Lederer
Richard is an author, speaker, educator, and master punster. His works include "Get Thee to a Punnery", "Anguished English", "More Anguished English", and most recently, "Pun and Games". He has had some thousands of articles on language published in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Lederer is now living in California. He's known as the "Wizard of Words" in the magazine, "Time Machine". You can visit Richard at his web site.

From: "Stan Kegel"

Subject: [puny] Poetry: Homonyms and Heteronyms
Date: February 21, 2002 9:32 PM

Richard Lederer will be this year's recipient of Toastmasters
International's highest award. Here are two of my favorite examples of
his writings:

A Bazaar Tail

One night a knight on a hoarse horse
Rode out upon a road.
This male wore mail for war and would
Explore a wood that glowed.

His tale I'll tell from head to tail
I'll write his rite up right.
A hidden site our hero found,
A sight that I shalt cite.

With woe he shouted, "Whoa!" as rain
Without a break did reign.
To brake, he pulled the rein, and like
A shattered pane, felt pain.

The poor knight met a witch, which made
Sweat pour from every pore.
He'd never seen a scene like that.
His sore heart couldn't soar.

Then they a game for truffles played,
In which he mined her mind.
To prove who was the better bettor
And find who should be fined.

He won one twice, he won two, too.
To grate on her felt great.
To wrest the rest, he went for four;
And, at the fore, ate eight

Due to her loss, the mourning witch,
'Midst morning mist and dew,
Her truffles missed. I know no way,
Do I, to weigh her rue.

Our knight began to reel, for real.
The world whirled so to speak.
All the days of the week his sole soul felt
The dizzy daze of the weak.

Our heir to knighthood gave it up.
He felt the fare not fair.
His wholly holy sword soared up
As he threw it through the air.

The bell has tolled, I'm told. The hour
To end our tale draws nigh.
Without ado, I bid adieu,
So by your leave, bye-bye.
(From "Word Circus" by Richard Lederer)

A Hymn to Heteronyms

Please go through the entrance of this little poem.
I guarantee it will entrance you.
The content will certainly make you content,
And the knowledge gained sure will enhance you.

A boy moped around when his parents refused
For him a new moped to buy.
The incense he burned did incense him to go
On a tear with a tear in his eye.

He ragged on his parents, felt they ran him ragged
His just deserts they never gave.
He imagined them out on some deserts so dry,
Where for water they'd search and they'd rave.

At present he just won't present or converse
On the converse of each high-flown theory
Of circles and axes in math class; he has
Many axes to grind, isn't cheery.

He tried to play baseball, but often skied out,
So when the snows came, he just skied.
But he then broke a leg putting on his ski boots,
And his putting in golf was in need.

He once held the lead in a cross country race
Till his legs started feeling like lead.
And when the pain peaked, he looked kind of peaked
His liver felt liver, then dead.

A number of times he felt number, all wound
Up, like one with a wound, not a wand.
His new TV console just couldn't console
Or slough off a slough of despond.

The rugged boy paced 'round his shaggy rugged room
And he spent the whole evening till dawn
Evening out the cross-winds of his hate.
Now my anecdote winds on and on.

He thought: "Does the prancing of so many does
Explain why down dove the white dove,
Or why pussy cat has a pussy old sore
And bass sing in bass notes of their love

Do they always sing, "Do re mi" and stare, agape
At eros, agape, each minute?
Their love's not minute; there's an overage of love.
Even overage fish are quite in it.

These bass fish have never been in short supply
As they supply spawn without waiting.
With their love fluids bubbling, abundant, secretive
There's many a secretive mating.
(From "Crazy English" by Richard Lederer)

Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. -
In recognition of his ability and influence as a writer and public
speaker, Richard Lederer, Ph. D., of San Diego, Calif., has been
selected as the 2002 recipient of Toastmasters International's Golden
Gavel Award.

Dr. Lederer will be presented with the award during a luncheon in his
honor on Thursday, Aug. 22, at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter in
San Antonio, Texas, as part of Toastmasters' 71 st Annual International Convention.

The Golden Gavel is the most prestigious award offered by Toastmasters
International, a nonprofit, worldwide organization devoted to teaching
public speaking skills. The award is presented to a distinguished
individual in the fields of communication and leadership. Past
recipients include Walter Cronkite, Anthony Robbins, Mark Russell, Art
Linkletter, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Robert Schuller, and
management experts Tom Peters, Kenneth Blanchard, and Harvey Mackay.

Dr. Lederer is the author of more than 3,000 books and articles about
language and humor, including his Anguished English series. His
syndicated column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and
magazines throughout the United States. He appears regularly on the
national public radio show "Weekend All Things Considered" and hosts a
weekly show, "A Way With Words," on San Diego public radio, where he and
his co-host tackle "that glorious, stupendous, tremendous,
end-over-endous adventure we call language - from puns to punctuation,
pronouns to pronunciation, and diction to dictionaries."

Dr. Lederer will appear on national public TV during the PBS March
pledge drive. He has been called the Wizard of Idiom, Attila the Pun,
Conan the Grammarian, a fly-by-the- roof-of-the-mouth verbivore.
Verbivore? Dr. Lederer explains, "Carnivores eat meat, herbivores eat
plants and vegetables, and verbivores eat words (sometimes their own)
and love to feel the juices coursing down their cheeks." This verbivore
not only consumes words; he serves them up as a great feast.

Toastmasters International has helped more than four million people
develop their communication and leadership skills since the
organization's founding in 1924 at the YMCA in Santa Ana, Calif. Today,
Toastmasters International has nearly 185,000 members, in 9,000 clubs in
70 countries, including 115 clubs in the San Diego area.

For more information about Toastmasters International or Dr. Richard
Lederer, please contact Suzanne Frey at (949) 858-8255.

Jan 6, 5:45 PM

The man with the golden pun kicks off writers' convention

By Billy Cox
FLORIDA TODAY

If you're one of those wiseacres who sit around dreaming up puns (e.g. What do you call an empty hot dog? A hollow weenie), then you're going to love Richard Lederer. And if you can't imagine why any sane person would dwell on this sort of silliness, the keynote speaker for this weekend's Space Coast Writers Guild Convention in Suntree counters that it's a sign of an active mind.

"English is the most powerful of all languages," says Lederer from his home in San Diego, "and I can say that with authority, because I'm fluent in French, Russian, Italian, Thousand Islands, Vinaigrette, Ranch, Green Goddess and Honey Mustard.

"Our vocabulary is four times bigger than any other language that has ever existed. German is second, and we're six times bigger than Spanish and French, which are tied for third. So when you have more words, by definition, you're going to have more puns, more opportunity for wordplay. It's everywhere.

"You can even transpose letters and come away with something recognizable. A sick family is a facsimile, a motion picture is a potion mixture, a ghost town is a toast gown, fan mail is man fail. And you can shift from verbs to nouns without ever changing the word. You walk the walk and talk the talk. Have you ever seen a home run? Or a cigar box?"

This is what conference-goers are in for if they attend the guild's Friday night address at Imperial's Hotel & Conference Center, one of Lederer's two workshops on Saturday, or the keynote dinner speech Saturday night. In one of the SCWG's busiest schedules ever, two dozen workshops are on tap, with speakers as disparate as novelist Tim Dorsey, screenplay pitchman extraordinaire Brent Reed, and editor Katy Brogan of Writer's Market.

"We're having 24 writers this year, so we'll be running five (scheduling) tracks at one time. Last year, we ran four," says guild president Joyce Henderson, who anticipates weekend attendance in excess of 150 people. "And with Richard highlighting our conference, we think we've got a strong lineup."

While conceding the truism that a pun is the lowest form of wit, this Harvard-educated author, columnist, public-radio darling and English teacher of 27 years insists the form is an overlooked medium for recruiting children into a love of the language. In fact, two of his bestsellers, "Anguished English" and "Get Thee To a Punnery," enjoyed such strong readership among middle-schoolers that he decided to write two more books on wordplay devoted solely to that demographic market.

"The publishing industry is dominated by (books for) pre-K through the third grade," says Lederer. "There's lots of good literature for kids in the 10-14 age bracket, but not a lot about language. The books that are out there are too young -- too many pictures, and not enough challenging text."

So it's no coincidence that Lederer, who taught for nearly three decades at a private school in Concord, N.H., will host Friday morning and afternoon workshops with local seventh- and eighth-grade students and teachers. Furthermore, on Sunday and Monday, he'll be huddling with students at Holy Trinity Episcopal School in Melbourne. No doubt, puns will be at the core of his presentations.

"Puns are a part of our folklore, they're a part of our American-ness," says the 65-year-old host of "A Way With Words," a weekly installment for San Diego's KPBS-FM. "If I say to you, 'What's black and white and read all over?' you'll answer 'A newspaper.' Children begin picking that one up at around age 6 or 7. It's usually the introduction to the idea that a single word can have multiple meanings, or at least, a word that sounds the same can.

"That's often the beginning of a lifetime of messing around with words. And if you think about it, that's the way poetry works, it's the way literature works, that richness, the extra layers of meaning of words and themes. Puns are a joy. They're what unite us. I'm separated from these kids in Melbourne by time and space, but we are united by the folklore of our language."

One of Lederer's proudest achievements, in fact, was being named International Punster of the Year by -- yes, there is such a thing -- the International Save The Puns Foundation, in 1990. The ISTPF was founded in 1979 by the late Canadian John Crosbie, and the self-effacing outfit that claims 1,600 members in North America holds its annual meeting in Chicago on April Fools' Day.

Thus, Lederer can talk about homographs (words that differ in meaning but not spelling), spoonerisms (new words formed by swapping first letters) and assorted other etiologies until the cliches come home. He gushes with examples ("Why was Billy embarrassed when he opened the refrigerator? He saw the salad dressing"), images ("The Buddhist never took novocaine while he was in the dentist's chair because he was able to transcend dental medication") and punchlines ("He was a super callous fragile mystic hexed by halitosis").

Lederer's didactic verbiage rains in torrents. You probably never knew, for instance, that if you cross a gorilla with a ceramics craftsman, you get a hairy potter. Or what about the time two ropes went into a tavern and encountered a hostile bartender? The bartender asked the first one if he was a rope, then tossed the honest rope into the street when he replied yes. The second rope tried to disguise himself by ruffling up his ends. When the bartender asked, "Are you one'a them ropes, too?" the rope replied, "I'm a frayed knot."

"My favorite spoonerism came from Dorothy Parker, who said, 'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.' I consider that to be the greatest pun of the 20th century," says Lederer, who's surprised when he doesn't see media headlines picking up on obvious puns. Take the capture of Saddam Hussein.

"When we found this guy, he was our ace in the hole. I mean literally, because he was our ace of spades. . . . You can't shut this stuff off once it starts. I can't help it."

Although Lederer isn't pleased with America's current state of literacy, he says the pun is helping to stop the slide (witness the wordplay on late-night talk shows, and the growing popularity of crossword puzzles). He also thinks computers are responsible for encouraging "more (e-mail) letters than we've ever written before. Yes, it has its own shorthand and lower case, a lot of btws and fyis and lols, but we are writing more and some of it's pretty good."

Being the International Punster of the Year is a far cry from Lederer's college days as a pre-med student, when he went off the rails after discovering he was reading chemistry books for their literary value. And it's far too late to change course now.

"To conclude this interview, as one frog said to the other, time's fun when you're having flies."

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