Tag Archives: words

Short Poem: ‘The Logophile Picks a Fight’

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By the spots of shame with which your life is spattered,
Your position, sir, is grossly overmattered –
Overmattered, sir, or greatly undermined;
And I cannot help but find
That the lot of humankind
Would be bettered, not embittered, were you battered!

After having kicked around for years, this short piece–which has no purpose other than wordplay–finally got an explanatory title (instead of just the first few words) and was published in this month’s Lighten-Up Online in the section ‘Words, Words, Words’. Thanks, Jerome Betts!

Photo: “Picking a fight for net neutrality #ind12” by Kalexanderson is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Photo has been cropped.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: David Galef, “Entropy”

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David Galef

All I said I unsay now,
Speaking backwardly,
Raveling webs of words,
Reversing entropy.

But that is not what I meant at all
In order to mean something new,
Trying to re-verb sunrise,
Trying to undo the dew.

Or stirring the coffee slowly.
As if retracing a rune,
Hoping the sugar will undissolve,
Emerging pristine on the spoon.

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of reversal, from turning back time to building order out of ever-encroaching disorder. On a universal scale, this act is impossible, but on the local level, one can make little inroads: writing a poem, for instance. I started out with just the line “All I say I unsay now.” The rest is fanciful, I admit, but I had fun. The poem appeared originally in Light, when it was edited by its founder, John Mella. He’d rejected a few other poems, but this one he took at once.

David Galef has published over two hundred poems in magazines ranging from Light and Measure to The Yale Review. He’s also published two poetry volumes, Flaws and Kanji Poems, as well as two chapbooks, Lists and Apocalypses. In real life, he directs the creative writing program at Montclair State University.
You can see more of his work at www.davidgalef.com

Poem: “I Started Out Alone”

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I started out alone
with no numbers and no words.
The people gave me food and clothes.
I loved the sun and birds.

And when I reach the end,
numbers and words all done,
have to be fed and dressed again,
I’ll love the birds and sun.

This little poem was published recently in Bewildering Stories, and I like it for a couple of reasons: its simplicity (echoing the simplicity of the states of beginning and end of life, the simplicity of the basics of being human); and its completeness – it covers an entire life, and I can’t think of more words that could be added; and the formality, not only of the simple rhythm and simple rhymes, but of the structure, the line-by-line echoing of the beginning of life in the end of life.

For all these reasons it is an easy little poem to remember and recite, and that is satisfying in itself.

Poetry Resources: The Economist’s ‘Johnson’ blog

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You may be surprised to hear of The Economist magazine as a poetry resource, but it is a much wider-ranging weekly than most people realise. Start from the back with its chosen Obituary (eccentric and eclectic, it has included Alex the African Grey parrot, writers such as Ray Bradbury written up in their own style, and dictators, deposed kings, and UFO abductees). Move forwards into the Books and Arts section, further into Science and Technology… there’s a lot there, before you get to the finance, business and politics that is the purpose of it all.

Apart from the half dozen book reviews (eccentric and eclectic, of course), the weekly ‘Johnson’ column or blog post covers all things word and language related. The current edition’s Johnson is headed ‘Degrees of Separation’ in the print edition, while online it calls itself ‘Words, like people, have tangled and extensive family trees – surprising connections emerge if you look back far enough’.

 

The article is focused on Proto-Indo-European’s development into the whole range of modern languages from Gaelic to Bengali; how different the origins may be of words that have identical spelling and pronunciation and have apparently related meaning (a pawn and to pawn); and the surprising common ancestry of apparently unrelated words (such as ‘divine’ and both halves of the word ‘Tuesday’).

Inasmuch as writing relies for much of its power on the richness of words and their ripples of meaning, association and derivation, The Economist’s Johnson column is a worthwhile and engaging weekly read for all writers, and especially poets.

Poetry Resources: A.Word.A.Day

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One of the greatest resources for any lover of words is the (free) email subscription to A.Word.A.Day from wordsmith.org, founded by Anu Garg in 1994. Of course, you may well be getting this already as one of the 400,000 subscribers in 170 countries, enjoying the definition, pronunciation, etymology, usage and visual illustration of a not-quite-random word five days a week. Added bonuses include a quotation from a writer on their birthday, and limericks, anagrams and puns in the readers’ comments on the weekend.

This week’s theme is words used by singer-songwriter Roy Zimmerman, and is the trigger for my posting about A.Word.A.Day. Roy Zimmerman, as guest editor for A.Word.A.Day, writes:

“When my wife Melanie and I write a song, the Idea is out in front. People often ask which comes first, the melody or the lyrics. We say the Idea, with a capital I. The Idea takes shape as a hook — a little snatch of lyrics and melody — and the hook gives birth to a tune, a meter scheme, and a rhyme scheme.

We both love words. We’re both aware that words do real work in the world, especially words that rhyme and meter well. That’s what we’re trying to do with these songs — provide context, history, laughter, and encouragement for the work of social justice.“

The description of the sequence for songwriting is virtually identical to that for writing poetry – and although poetry doesn’t necessarily have a tune, poetry definitely has a tone, a mood, that forms in the same place. Songs and poetry are very close siblings. Sometimes songs are forgiven weak lyrics because of a strong melody; sometimes poems are forgiven their lack of rhythm and rhyme because of their strongly expressed ideas and images. But at their most memorable they fuse as catchy songs that can also be fully enjoyed as poems without the music.

In either case, they are completely dependent on words. And to prod your word awareness, there is nothing simpler than the daily email from Anu Garg.