Cornspeak

(Courtesy of the collaborative exertions of the 2001 OU English TAs)

O me! O corn! of the questions of these recurring--What good amid these, O me, O corn? Answer: That life exists and corn--That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a kernel.
--Walt Whitman

OF CORN AND MEN
"And we can have a little corn hutch out back, George? And I can feed the corn rabbits?" he said.
"Hey Lenny, look over there," I said. As he leaned forward he was unaware of the cob I held in my hand, poised at the back of his head.
--John Steinbeck

One corn,
two corn,

Red corn,
Blue corn.

This one has a little star.
This one has a little car.
--Dr. Seuss

To thine own corn be true.
--William Shakespeare

I'd rather have corned and lost than be Shakespeare.
--John C. Holmes

Petty bourgeois slime! When you eat the corn of the proletariat's table, you chew the gold of the masses. The entrails revolt!
--Karl Marx

Quoth the Raven:
Nevercorn.
--Edgar Allan Poe

We know the sound of two hands shucking corn, but what is the sound of one hand shucking?
--J. D. Salinger

Confucius say: Chewed corn does not pass as unchewed kernel.

A woman must have money and a corncob of her own.
--Virginia Woolf

The glistening hair of the husk peels back to reveal. . . soft, fleshlike kernels pulsating like buds.
--Anaiis Nin

Corn is truth, truth corn--That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
--John Keats

I rise with my buttered hair,
and I eat corn like air.
--Sylvia Plath

Call me cornmeal.
--Herman Melville

What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a corn that he knew too well. It was all a corn and a man was corn too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cornness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was corn y pues corn y corn y pues corn. Our corn who art in corn, corn be thy name thy kingdom corn thy will be corn in corn as it is in corn. Give us this corn our daily corn and corn us our corn as we corn our corns and corn us not into corn but deliver us from corn; pues corn. Hail corn, full of corn, corn is with thee.
--Ernest Hemingway

It was the best of corn, it was the worst of corn.
--Charles Dickens

This is the way the corn ends, not with a bang but a kernel.
--T. S. Eliot

"Corn," I said. "Corn I will." Corn.
--James Joyce

Corn is corn is corn is corn is corn is corn is corn is corn.
--Gertrude Stein

Whose corn this is I think I know,
his ear is in the village though.
My little horse must think it odd,
for corn to fall off from the cob.
--Robert Frost ("Looking at Corn on a Snowy Evening")

Sylvia Cynthia Stout
wondered why the corn came out.
It was not buttered, it was not creamed,
it was a whole half ear it seemed.
--Shel Silverstein

(c
o
r
niness)
ri,
pen.
--e.e. cummings

"Why that is preposterous," said the duchess. "By midmorning I have passed at least a half dozen kernels, so strong is my love for corn."
"Untrue! Contrariwise!" screamed the queen, "To assume you pass more corn than I. Off with her head!"
--Lewis Carroll (ALICE THROUGH THE CORN DID PASS)

The unimpacted and nonvernacular corn fell through all the biding dust of the transparent and groping ages of every myriad unintelligible and incontrovertible century passing without abnegation and transparent as every child's purling ineluctable stalk swaying in the tarnished and delicate gloaming.
--William Faulkner

Corn is not about a message.
--Robert Miklitsch

I picked up an ear of corn which is every ear of corn, put on some butter and forgot it right away. They say corn cobs have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine, and that little pad of butter is a surprise every time. It's hard to say if they're happy, but they don't seem much to mind.
--Ani Difranco

Alas in our hour of need O corn you grant us sustenance, and we know that you are the true paradise. I especially dig some corn chips. With guacamole.
--Milton

There ain't no corn gayer than british corn. Bruggy, bruggy bruga.
--Andrew Sarris

His eyes scaled the mighty skyscrapers of corn; the sunrise glistened upon the industry below. Oh how does the corn grow so? Who is he in relation to the corn?
--Ayn Rand

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just corn when he's drunk.
--Tom Waits

I saw the best corn of my generation destroyed in succotash, decobbed, hysterical, unbuttered.
--Allen Ginsberg

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