Most people, I believe, write some sort of poetry when they are very young. Over the years, this poetic impulse, for the majority, gradually shuts down, as the “real world” overtakes us. I’m one of those who, while not a published poet, continued to write poetry and songs all my life.<\/p>\n
And I have a\u00a0theory (surprise!) w.r.t. the writing of poetry in my native tongue, which is obviously English. Now,\u00a0poetry is a universal impulse, written\u00a0in all languages and by all cultures over the millenia. But it seems to me that poetry written in English, to a greater extent\u00a0than other languages, benefits enormously from the very structure of our language. More than almost any other “common” modern language, the very genesis of English, amalgamated at the Battle of Hastings from the Anglo-Saxon and the invading French, contains ambiguities and overloaded meanings that I think are less prevalent in other, “purer” languages. And this birthmark, I think, also makes English extremely susceptible to continued<\/em> expansion. Yes, in modern life, all languages accept and incorporate foreign words and phrases (many from English), but our language has had this predilection since it came into being. Perhaps in the same way that people who master at least one foreign language early in life have been shown to be much better at learning subsequent languages. Once the groundwork of an extra language has been laid, the brain seems more disposed to adding other kinds of words and syntax. Perhaps our cultural communication mechanism (ie, English), born in two worlds, is more prone to adding words from other worlds.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the mixed syntactical origins of English have led to (perhaps) awkward constructs in phrasing and sense. As an example, the auxiliary verbs are all over the map. The merging (actually, a sort of re-merging, Anglo-Saxon meeting back up with the Normans, who had taken a deep detour into Latinism) of our two main language DNA strands led to unusual pronunciations and syllabic stresses and spellings.<\/p>\n And for me, it is this resulting ambiguity and combination of soundings that has made English the<\/em>\u00a0perfect language for poetry. Phrases and lyrics can contain multitudes of overloaded meanings, like a hologram of intersecting intents. For myself, at least, that provides a power in English poetry that may not be readily available in other languages. Beautiful, transcendent images can be described in any language. But images that can lead to multiple emotional responses, even responses that may contradict each other, seem to me have a greater power to invoke that wordless wonder that the best poetry invokes.<\/p>\n At any rate, that is my theory. I wonder if there has ever been a scholarly or formal\u00a0investigation in a similar vein? It’s likely. There is nothing truly new under the sun.<\/p>\n Relativity \u00a9 2016 Chuck Puckett<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people, I believe, write some sort of poetry when they are very young. Over the years, this poetic impulse, for the majority, gradually shuts down, as the “real world” overtakes us. I’m one of those who, while not a published poet, continued to write poetry and songs all my life. And I have a\u00a0theory … Continue reading “An English Way With Words”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-metaphysics","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMy sunset is someone else\u2019s sunrise
\nMy evening is another person\u2019s dawn
\nMy morning ends another\u2019s daylight
\nMy sunrise stops another\u2019s song.
\nMy arrival\u2019s another\u2019s soul departure
\nMy coming takes up another space
\nMy going makes a space to enter
\nMy leaving leaves one to take my place.
\nMy future is all my children\u2019s history
\nTomorrows that they knew yesterday
\nMy story builds on older stories
\nMy past has always led me to today.
\nMy stars shine down as others\u2019 suns
\nMy storms leave peace in others\u2019 skies
\nMy life takes only so much room
\nA room I see with only these, my eyes.<\/em><\/p>\n