Although April is almost over, I wanted to mention National Poetry Month. I love poetry, with its catlike way of settling into your space with never a by-your-leave or may I. Poetry– if you get the right sort, that is– clings to your mind like orange cat hair on a black skirt.
Even the most determinedly posturing Philistine (“I ain’t readin’ none of that there po’try stuff. It’s for gurls.”) can be captured by the magic of just the right words in the right combination in the right place. And that’s what poetry is, neither more nor less. Just words, vividly placed, pinning wild thoughts to tame pages.
If you haven’t yet found the poetry that stirs your soul, sign up for a daily poem e-mail or RSS feed from Poets.org, get the Poetry Foundation‘s iPhone app, or put an anthology in your bathroom. If you read a poem a day, you’ll begin to find the poets that speak to you.
My beloved poets include Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, George Herbert, William Butler Yeats, and others, and I try to read at least one poem a day. Who are yours?
Words, like moths, are captured by writers who pin them to the page in various forms. What writer’s work most deftly captivates you? Why?
Difficult, difficult choice. However, I think I’ll go with Emily Dickinson, whose poetry captivated me from the very first encounter. Here are a few favorites:
Words can be mangled, misused, or misunderstood. What is your funniest example of mangling, misuse, or misunderstanding?
Here’s a story that reaches far back into my childhood. I had a soft blue elephant toy, and his name was Philichart. One day my mother asked what “Philichart” meant.
“It’s from that song. You know, ‘Revive us again, philichart with thy love . . .'”
She wasn’t usually the hysterical type, so I was surprised when she laughed and laughed and laughed until tears ran.
“It’s not philichart,” she finally explained. “It’s ‘fill each heart.'”
Fill each heart or philichart, I still loved my little blue elephant.
Like the author who apologized for writing long because he didn’t have time to make it short, I’ll apologize for choosing more than one quote for the Day 3 challenge because I just couldn’t weed out either of these.
1- We are masters of unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
Winston Churchill
I like this quote, because I also believe the old saying that “least said, soonest mended.” Too many words can create tangles, hard feelings, excessive self-revelation (we really don’t need to tell the world what we had for breakfast– unless it’s amazing, of course). Too many words often bore others, interfere with a coherent thought process, and dissipate good ideas before they’re born. And quietness is a good thing.
2- The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing is a process of discovery for both writer and reader. I often begin writing with just a glimmer of an idea, but as I follow it, it unrolls just before me, and as it unfolds, I discover things I didn’t know I knew. Words are a magic carpet.
Words can change history. What speech or document do you believe to be most important? Why?
Since I’m writing a bit late on these prompts, I have the advantage of seeing what others have chosen. Many moving examples have been suggested, and most are or have been the “most important” speech or document of their age.
In choosing the one I believe to be most important, though, I think I will have to side with Hollee at HolleeDaze Ink who chose the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a concise outline of what Christianity looks like when practiced from the inside out, rather than from the outside in as the Pharisees had been doing.
The question: Is there a word that has changed, or could change your life? What is it, and what difference would it make?
A single word? What kind of question is that? Our lives are changed daily by words, and to choose one over the other seems nearly impossible. Therefore I’ll just share two simple, but potentially life-changing words.
“Yes.” Whether it’s a response to “Will you marry me?,” “Did you turn off the bath water?,” “Would you like to accept this position?,” “Are we expecting?,” “Will you drive the get-away car?,” or “Do you love me?,” this simple word can change life in an instant.
“No.” Generally meaning the opposite of “yes,” “no” packs an even more powerful punch to any of the questions posed above. If followed by the qualifier “but,” its power may be diluted.
There are many other potentially powerful words– love, freedom, truth, justice, and more, but taken alone, few hold the dynamite of a simple yes or no.
Okay, that gets us past the obvious part. What does that mean? Here’s an except from the definition provided by my desktop dictionary widget:
classic |ˈklasik|
adjective
judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind : a classic novel | a classic car.
remarkably and instructively typical : I had all the classic symptoms of flu.
noun
1 a work of art of recognized and established value: his books have become classics.
a thing that is memorable and a very good example of its kind : he’s hoping that tomorrow’s game will be a classic…
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from French classique or Latin classicus ‘belonging to a class or division,’ later ‘of the highest class,’ from classis (see class ).
In a newly edited edition of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, the controversial n-word, as well as the word “injun,” has been replaced by the word “slave.” According to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books are trying to create an edition that will encourage Twain’s work to be once again read widely in schools.
Is this censorship?
I am personally opposed to institutional or government censorship, which is defined by the same obliging widget as “the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.” Huckleberry Finn has already been banned in many schools, and that’s the problem this edition seeks to address. The editor and publishers are hoping that this sanitized version will be admitted into the halls of bland and will open Twain’s world to a generation of students who may otherwise never read his works.
As long as the classic version remains available, this edition is simply another version, and is not unforgivable. After all, you can already find Huck Finn in many formats and editions including:
Manga
Severely abridged
Retold in vocabulary considered appropriate for 9-12 year-olds
With character lessons added (!!!)
Hacked into sections of a few chapters each
Graphic novel/comic book
Video
And more I’ve probably missed, including the musical version below.
Therefore, since Twain’s version of the book is widely available and no effort is being made to gather copies and burn them (yet), and as I’m unaware of any efforts to round up and penalize readers of the original version, I think I’ll wait a bit before I start waving the censorship banner.
The point is that people have never been able to keep their grubby hands off great art. Show me a great work, and I’ll show you something that sparks a greater-than-average emotional response, something that communicates across time, space, and worldview. That’s one reason art remains alive, vibrant, part of the culture. That’s why you’ll hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons backing a computer commercial, or see the Mona Lisa recreated in M&Ms. (Oddly, that’s probably also why misguided educators imagine it’s a good idea to tack trivia questions onto a classic work of literature, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Why it matters
That’s also the reason that it matters when someone decides Huckleberry Finn will be better without the n-word. Remove that one word, and the book’s emotional impact is diluted. Reduce the emotional impact, and the work flattens. History is distorted, and there is less to feel, less to discuss, less to think about, less to remember.
Dilute literature, and we’re all doomed. Words — carefully chosen words, accurate for the time and place of the text — powerfully convey a sense of time and place. School curriculum is steadily being reduced to the blandest of pablum by the knee-jerk reactions of hypersensitive adults. Dry textbook summaries are unlikely to spark any discussion, and with living literature off the table, there’s little or nothing to awaken thought or emotion. It’s little wonder that many students emerge from institutional schooling inoculated against serious thought.
Twain’s entire body of work not only reveals a sensitivity toward injustice, but it also paints a vivid picture of the society and issues of his day. It’s part of the literary lens through which we can see where we’ve been, contemplate where we are, and consider where we are going. Authors are the artists whose word pictures help us decide what kind of people we want to be. Words matter. Gribben’s edition is doubtless well-intentioned and suitable for the use he intends, but I will not be recommending it for Excellence in Literature.
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Mystery author Beth Groundwater posted about analyzing her blog using a web tool called Typealyzer. It’s easy to use — just type in your blog’s URL, and you’ll quickly receive an analysis of your blog persona, complete with an image of which parts of the brain — thinking, intuition, sensing, or feeling — are most active during the writing. I’m fascinated by analytical tools, so I ran Words Into Books through the analyzer, as well as two other blogs I write. Here are the results.
The analysis indicates that the author of http://wordsintobooks.com is of the type:
INTP – The Thinker
The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about. [I’m really hoping that last bit isn’t true– I think I’m actually a nice person, and not any of those things!;-)]
Both of the other blog personas were variations of the Thinker persona (my brain graph was seriously lopsided in all the variations!). One was Mechanic (I write a lot of “how-to” things for that blog), and the other was The Scientist. Here are the descriptions for each of those personas.
ISTP – The Mechanic
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are highly skilled at seeing and fixing what needs to be fixed. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.
The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.
INTJ – The Scientist
The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it — often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.
The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.
Now, no one who knows me would mistake me for a mechanic or scientist– those are just labels for particular types of “mind patterns, interests and human motivations,” according to the Typealyzer creator, Mattias Östmar. The common thread between the three types is that they centered on the thinking axis of the graph and extended in one case toward the Practical/Sensing, and in the other, toward Intuition. The “Feeling” quadrant of the graph was untouched, which means that there’s none of what my grandmother would call “the gooshy stuff.”
The analysis seems fairly accurate for each of the blog personas, and the description of the Scientist is probably closest to my actual personality. Beth writes that she revisited the Typealyzer about 18 months after her first analysis to see if her writing style was consistent, and she found that it was. If I remember, I might revisit it too, and see if anything’s changed. Writing that’s too cerebral can be a bit dry– maybe I need to try gooshing it up a bit!
While blog analysis is mostly just for fun, it can be helpful to analyze the focus and tone of your blog to be sure that you’re attracting the right readers. If you’re writing for “Thinker-style” readers, you probably won’t be successful writing with a “Feelers” voice, and “Feelers” probably won’t be very attracted to a strictly “Thinker” blog. If you’re not getting the readers you want, maybe it’s time to analyze your blog text and see who you’re speaking to!
Although April is almost over, I wanted to mention National Poetry Month. I love poetry, with its catlike way of settling into your space with never a by-your-leave or may I. Poetry– if you get the right sort, that is– clings to your mind like orange cat hair on a black skirt.
The question: Is there a word that has changed, or could change your life? What is it, and what difference would it make?
