Words, words!

“Never better, mad as a hatter,

right as rain, might and main,

hanky panky, hot toddy,

hoity-toity, cold shoulder,

bowled over, rolling in clover….’’

— From “Sweater Weather: A Love Song to Language,’’ by Sharon Bryant (born 1943), a New England-based poet who teaches creative writing at Lesley University, in Cambridge, Mass.