day 16.

Pippin Poem

Practically speaking, the 

Pippins were superfluous.

Pears were the point of my errand. But

petite and tart,

puckered and gnarled, the 

Pippins seduced me at the market. I

picked up four. At home, I

posed them on the windowsill, their tubby sides

propped together while I 

prepared their

pastry nest. Floured the dough,

patted it into shape,

pressed it into a shallow green bowl.

Picking the apples from the sill, I

pared them, one by one, their little jackets

peeling in a heap. I tucked them in and

pricked the crust, resigned myself to

patience while they

perfumed the kitchen. When the pie emerged,

plump and bubbling, I

polished it off.

national poetry month, day 6.

In praise of words, the snap and pizzazz and taste of words.

Ode to American English
by Barbara Hamby

I was missing English one day, American, really,
     with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything
from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English
     is not the same, if the paperback dictionary
I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera
     is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English
know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts,
     Dick Tracy, Tricky dick? With the elegant Oxfordian
accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod,
     hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U.S. of A.,
the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening
     of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating
on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking
     the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake,
Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period,
     the inability of 90% of the population to get the present perfect:
I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart,
     the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses
the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,
     in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,
"Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie
     mummy. "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am,
I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy,
     rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all,
the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider
     boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya
with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo
     to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering,
shopaholic rant. i miss it quotidian beauty, its querulous
     back-biting righteous indignation, it preening rotgut
flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters
     Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators
of the swamps and plains. i miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird
     resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent
of utter unhappiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist
     euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular.
On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny
     Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode,
and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue,
     finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble,
Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all,
     sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne
verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping
     in my head like Corvettes on Dexadrine, French verbs
slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.

excuse me while i go fuzzle myself.

Nothing I post for Words This Week could ever compare to this list of words that should never have become obsolete (complete with owl pictures to illustrate the feels). So I'm shamelessly recycling from buzzfeed via Simon Barron on Twitter, and will now pour myself a stiff gin. Happy Friday.

fifteen thousand useful phrases.

A good book is a wonderful present. I stopped by Shana's a couple of days ago, and as I took my coat off she casually said, as if it were no big deal, gesturing toward the couch: there's a present for you there. And there was this magical book, sitting on the sofa cushion like any other little thing. Only it isn't any other little thing. It's the most enchanting book ever. Fifteen thousand useful phrases. You may have noticed that I have a thing for words. I also have a thing for odd reference books. And people who can turn a phrase. So this book? SHAZAM. I spent the next several hours reading word pairings and phrases aloud. I changed my regular Twitter bio to include the phrase "a well-bred mixture of boldness and courtesy." Then I spent some time this morning setting up a Twitter account so I can tweet the whole entire book, because the world needs to know all about the fifteen thousand useful phrases, subtitled "A practical handbook of pertinent expressions, striking similes, literary, commercial, conversational and oratorical terms, for the embellishment of speech and literature, and the improvement of the vocabulary of those persons who read, write and speak English." By Grenville Kleiser, Funk & Wagnalls, 1917. It's hilarious and touching and altogether brilliant. SHAZAM.

"The choice word, the correct phrase, are instruments that may reach the heart, and awake the soul if they fall upon the ear in melodious cadence...Language is a temple in which the human soul is enshrined, and...it grows out of life..."

If you're interested in owning your own copy, it's available on Project Gutenberg in several digital formats and abebooks.com has lots of hardcopies in various conditions.

words this week.

Michael Chabon is one of my favorite wielders of the English language, and I keep stopping to read bits of this out loud because it's just so damn good. This week's words all come from Telegraph Avenue; a few were new to me, and the rest are old favorites.

Arcology: n. an ideal integrated city contained within a massive vertical structure, allowing maximum conservation of the surrounding environment

Captious: adj. marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress faults and raise objections

Clabber: n. milk that has naturally clotted on souring

Renascent: adj. rising again into being or vigor

Uxorial: adj. relating to a wife

words this week.

In the dictionary:

Ephemera

Ephemeral

Panache

Fritillaria

Quip

Scuppered

Gaffle - I like the slang usage of this word, as in to steal.

Bugbear - n. This is a new actual word to me. My only previous acquaintance with it has been as an adorable monster in Kingdom of Loathing, and I didn't realize it was a real word until I read it in Moby Dick. "...he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear." 

Also in words this week, a bit of Twitter magic:

words this week.

Not in the dictionary:

Binja (n., pl.): Portmanteau of dustbin and ninja; fantasy characters in Un Lun Dun by China Mieville.

Splorkle (n., v.): Portmanteau of splork and sparkle. (coined by @pixelparty)

Not in the English dictionary:

Yorodstvo (n.): "We were searching for real sincerity and simplicity, and we found these qualities in the yurodstvo [the holy foolishness] of punk." - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riot closing statements

The Holy Fool is a recurring theme in medieval literature and art. I love that there is an actual word for this in Russian. I love that it's been invoked in defense of punk and protest in this context. I also love the word holy - no, that's wrong. I love the meaning holy - and will pretty much get the weak knees for any phrase or idea that makes use of it.

In the dictionary:

Perfidy

Fetish

Thwart

words this week.

Image by CursiveArts

Not in the dictionary:

Salvagepunk (adj.): technological style progression from steampunk (from an interview with China Mieville)

Indecorgeous (adj.?): meaning undefined, use at will. Source.


In the dictionary:

Surrender
Chisel
Spalted
Lathe
Natty
Orion

An idea I like expressed in words I love:

Holy minimalism

And oh, how I love this series of etymological short films from Mysteries of Vernacular:

margin notes.

I find marks of authorship very compelling. Signatures, underlining, editing notations, doodles. Physical objects that say something in thought happened here. Tattoos. I wasn't interested in tattoos for a long time. I didn't object to them, I just wasn't really interested one way or the other. This may have had something to do with only seeing very boring ones - eagles and MOM. I started to get interested when my best friend was thinking about getting one - I think she had it narrowed down to an owl or a green man. She never did it, but by then I was curious and started noticing them more - especially since I was starting to meet really interesting people and they had much better ideas for inking themselves than eagles and MOM.

When I came across a book about literary tattoos, I lost my heart to the whole idea. There's a vast world of amazing and beautiful words-on-skin. There are thousands of quotes that I love, but none of them seemed like the right thing for me. Last fall, it finally came to me - the right idea for beauty, symbolism, permanence, impermanence and a life marked by love of words. After I move, I'll get a tattoo of proofreader's marks, in red, down my right side. The simple, elegant, universally recognized symbols of a work in progress. I can't think of anything more appropriate to who I am.

Images by me and from pinterest, fuckyeahliterarytattooes, tattoolit, and literary tattoos: a novel of flesh.

long thoughts on short words.

A couple of days ago I used the word funzies in an email to a friend. (I didn't know whether to put quotation marks around word or funzies in that sentence, so I'm just leaving them out altogether.) She came back with "Funzies? That doesn't sound like you." She's right, it doesn't sound like me. For starters, I don't often use abbreviations of any kind. I really, really like words, which means that I generally dislike the bastardized play-words that are such seductive, fizzy social shorthand. So why did I say it?

I'd intended it sarcastically, since the thing I was complaining about was anything but fun. That started me thinking about the way I use abbreviated language and sarcasm. Whatever my original intention is, I think the end result when I use lazy language is masking my experience, rather than conveying it. Using commonly recognized shorthand ends up creating a layer of distance.

For practice, I read back over what I'd written in the original email, and tried to pick out what I had actually been feeling. It turned out to be about 6 parts jealousy, 3 parts anger and 1 part sadness. Of course, figuring that out resulted in my feeling a bonus 1 part of shame - I don’t like admitting that I was jealous, so I shorthanded my way out of it the first time around. I felt less jealous, less angry and less sad after the second attempt, though.

I sometimes feel like I’m getting worse at expressing myself instead of better. That can’t really be true, but it is true that I’m easily influenced by tone. I struggle for bravery and authenticity a lot of the time. Having an online business means I live a lot of my life online, and for me that makes the struggle harder. I’m so easily influenced by the mood and tone of whatever conversational pool I’m currently swimming in. From time to time, I start to feel my attention and intention fracturing and I have to take a social internet break for a couple of days to remember what my true voice sounds like.

I think maybe I’m coming up on a break. Not for any big revelations, just to try to do better.