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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

Spider n (Skinner thinks this word softened from spinder or spinner, from spin; Junius, with his usual felicity, dreams that it comes from σπιδειν, to extend; for the spider extends its web Perhaps it comes from speiden, Dutch, or spyden, Danish, to spy, to lie upon the catch Dor, ðora Saxon, is beetle, or properly a humble bee or stingless bee May not the spider by spy dor, the insect that watches the door?): The animal that spins a web for flies Trolmydames n s: of this word I know not the meaning Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755)   ***   A tip for users: when choosing the right word to shout at a departing figure, concentrate on how much your throat can handle The door slammed behind you an hour ago, which means I must have been sitting on the bed like this for a smidge over two I’ve only just noticed the spider up there, however, Miss Muffetting a ragtime beat untimidly above the curtain-rail It is making come-hither gestures at me Valiant, I throw the closest thing to hand directly at it The closest thing to hand happens to be your pyjamas which you had forgotten to pack   Aphaeresis is the process whereby a word loses its initial sound or sounds, as in ’twas and knock Sounds are lost from the ends of words through apocope, literally ‘cutting off’: you can see it in the dangling useless b of a tail trailing, dumbly, behind lamb, the silent b of a lame dumb lamb, where b is a tuft of wool left on the wire once the flock’s moved on, a ghost-marker   Apocope comes from a different root than apocalypse, to disclose   The thrown pyjamas got halfway to the spider then crumpled in mid-air They became floor In the same way that when a black cat yawns there is a sudden unexpected new colour and potential violence to the equation of a scene, your crumpled silk pyjamas changed the room They sprawled a glowing chalk outline on the carpet The spider responds to my inroads upon

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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fiction

March 2013

If Not, Not

Natasha Soobramanien

fiction

March 2013

This story may or may not end in Venice and in silent, unacknowledged tragedy but let it begin here,...

feature

May 2014

How Imagination Remembers

Maria Fusco

feature

May 2014

How imagination remembers is twofold, an enfolded act of greed and ingenuity. I believe these impulses to be linked...

fiction

April 2013

Popular Mechanics

Gareth Dickson

fiction

April 2013

In simple terms, the process of combustion creates energy that is converted into motion. The ignition by the spark...

 

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