Word Play
“In a poem the word should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.” Marianne Moore
I’ve logged in enough hours during my lifetime – fooling around with words, in search of just the right ones – to finally call myself a poet. For many years I would say only, “I write poetry.” To claim to “be a poet” sounds presumptuous, unlike other claims, such as “I am a gardener,” or “I am a mother.” But what other word do we have in our culture to explain one who is so fascinated with language and with using it?
I’m the sort of person who reads a “wet paint” sign, but still has to touch the bench to see if it’s true. I’ve always been curious about the alphabet that way too. I believe that alphabet sounds have properties, like foods have vitamins, plants have medicine and colors have the power to affect our moods. The M…M…M sound conjures a sense of manna, matter or mother. Whereas, the letter G…G…G, when it’s hard, sounds antagonistic, especially if it’s followed by R…R…R (Grrr). Why does an L sound so light and lovely while D seems to say “downward descent”?
I like to play with the alphabet. I notice that the word “slack” has “lack” right in it. (Is slack somehow the plural of lack, the way too many pets become pests?) I notice that silent and listen are made up of the same letters, like note and tone are. I know that coyote is coy, because his name tells me so.
I once met a woman who made sock puppets, not the Sesame Street variety, but matriarchal figures, wise women, and witches. When I learned that her last name was “Weinstock,” I couldn’t help but point out that her name also said “Wise in Sock.” When I mentioned to another woman that if she added a G to her last name, “Robinson,” it would become “Robinsong,” she changed her name!
I believe that our names are our assignments and that there is mathematics to language. If we take a letter away or add another, everything changes. I don’t think it’s a mistake that the word “spell” means to put letters together in the right way, and it also means to make magic.
If you look at the word “universe,” you’ll see that it implies a unifying poetry. If you add one letter to “word” and you get the whole “world.” Why don’t they teach that in school?
~From “Muses Like Moonlight” by Colleen
June 5th, 2005 10:02 am
I don’t know why it’s not taught in school. But if you add an “O” to Hell, it turns into something nice, as in “Hello, Michele sent me.”
June 5th, 2005 11:03 am
That’s pretty cool! I reread your post 3 times.
Michele sent me
Lucy Jane
June 5th, 2005 11:06 am
That was quite a lovely, thought-provoking post. 🙂 Michele sent me!
June 5th, 2005 11:27 am
This is a well-written post, Colleen. Thank you for beaming on to the Enterprise.
June 5th, 2005 3:01 pm
hi! i’m here via michele – but i’ve been here before!
hope you don’t mind if i poke around for awhile, and have a great sunday!!
June 5th, 2005 4:37 pm
That is so neat, they SHOULD teach that in school, then school could be cool! It would make kids more exicted about reading. I could read when I was three years old and I have loved to read since.
June 5th, 2005 6:03 pm
I am Lora the Lorax-I speak for the trees.
Funny thing as a young teenager I rejected Laura to become Lora it matter to no one except my father who hated it, but had no say at the at point. To me Laura was just always so “nice.” Lora is much more assertive.
June 5th, 2005 10:33 pm
Very interesting… very thought-provoking… I’ve been reading for a very long time, but even I don’t have the intimacy with the English language that you do. Here via Michele’s… so, Hi!
June 6th, 2005 10:21 pm
At the age of twenty-four I started going by my middle name because I just didn’t feel like my first name fit me. Kat is short for my middle name. Everybody thought I was weird for changing it, but they just didn’t understand.
April 27th, 2011 10:32 pm
[…] Our names are our assignments. I just read an article about how Bernie Madoff made […]
April 30th, 2011 4:00 pm
I did this assignment in high school (“our names are our assignment”), believe it or not:
“Bonnie” means good.
“Lillian” means lily.
“Setliffe” means south cliff (sutcliff, sutliff, setliff, and my grandmother added the silent “e”)
Setliffe, my “maiden” (unmarried) name, is pronounced like “set lift” without that final “t” sound. Jacobs is the name I’ve had since I got married.
So my birth name means “Good Lily South Cliff.” Nice to meet cha, Girl/woman Red (wo)man. (Could that be condensed to Red Woman?)
July 8th, 2015 2:09 pm
[…] 7. Years ago I thought about starting a business giving name readings based on the properties of letter sounds and helping people name their babies, something I’ve done informally in the past. More HERE. […]