Some Quotes on Language and Writing

Some Quotes on Language and Writing

Mark Hopkins said, "Language is the picture and counterpart of thought."
Claude Levi-Strauss observed, "Language is a form of human reason and has its reasons which are unknown to man."
Ludwig Wittgenstein commented, "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
Mark Twain noted, "The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug."
Sheridan Baker proposed, "Grammar gives you command of language; logic, command of thought; rhetoric command of men."
William Faulkner claimed, "A writer needs three things, experience, observation and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."
William Zinsser emphasized, "Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel.  You will write only as well as you make yourself write."

Books I am reading

Books I am reading include

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke

If you do not have these, invest in them.

What all writing does and does not have in common

What all writing has in common
you must pay attention to your audience
you must pay attention to your purpose
you must pay attention to your word choice
you must pay attention to your structure
you must pay attention to your responsibilities as a writer
Where writing can change
audiences vary
purposes vary
word choice varies
structure varies
What remains the same for writers
responsibilities remain

A Blank Reflection

A Blank Reflection

Here I sit before the computer screen as blank as
A sheet of paper in my first typewriter yea eons ago
And now as then
Wrestle with words
And thoughts
And all comes naughts
Here as I sit before the computer screen as blank

Diction

Diction
is not just
a chapter in a freshman "comp." book,
is life, power,gender, community,
beyond/within the poet's provenance
words are alive, oxygenated dance
within the bloody brain
make all more plain
like/as (take your choice grammarian
on the plain Sumerian)
the thoughtless immortality
of the child cocooned within each adult
words whiz
do their own "biz"
come and go and trample meaning
when one is attempting gleaning
how elusive words can be--
even for one such as (sic) me.

Writer's Block

Writer's Block

No words now
Which form poem, or prose.
This drought every writer knows.
So I'll wait it out
And the words will come
Some
Later
Time
As prose or rhyme.
(originally written 21 August 1999)

A Question of Form

A Question of Form
What will lend
Itself to a poem
And in
What form will it come?
How shall it reveal
Itself for what
It is?
We are imaged
After our Creator.
Or were.
What of that which we create?
Does not death beget death
And
Chaos create chaos?
Man.
Originally in the image of God.
Seeking to be like god when
He was already in
The image of God,
Not trusting,
Fell,
Falls.
Now whose image do we see?
Adam.
Fallen
Neither trusting nor trusted,
Malformed, imbalanced, hurt.
Incomplete.
Alone.
Now God takes
The image of man,
Before, when man
Was whole.
The Alpha and the Omega
Incarnate
Incognito.
Adam II
Immanuel:  God with us.
Who being in the form of God,
Took on Himself
The form of a servant
That we might again
Be created in the image of God.
I can't handle it.
There are no words.
The Spirit
The Lord
The Father
Amen!  hallelujah

Dictum

Dictum
Create
a poem
Delineate
each vein and flow
as well you know
Trace
the soul
in ink, in a line so fine
it has no shadow
Intrude in cautious silence
Do night
Do not write
on the wall
but
on the sky

Getting It Write

Getting It Write
Wheat and chaff take
Equal
Amounts of time and effort, of
Elbow grease.
Editing is a process of taking wheat and chaff and
Time and
Effort and
Elbow grease, shaking and shifting, shaking and sifting, until
Something gives
Something falls
Something is satisfactory albeit not
Perfect and more muscle and crumpled page and full wastebasket
Testify satisfactorily to wheat
And chaff having settled each
Into its rightful place ...
For now.

Triplet

Triplet

1.
Poetry flows out
through wounds of time and of times
clots in timely words.
2.
Poetry came forth
Because of wounds because of
Words, words resulted
Some catapulted,
Thrust through to through, flew aspurt
Red they blew to read.
3.
Writing
Can strike anywhere
Like Franklin,
And when it does,
It leaves a track
You can follow back
And back or ahead
With words inside
Your head or pen's point
Words intoxicate and anoint
Enlighten, enflame, reveal true name
Purge false.