RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,170
(a weak old man)
I picked up a lot of things
over the years, even in the
most inconsequential of ways.
Language things, for sure -
of the sort that made little
sense, really, but were cool,
and useful too for someone
involved in writing. Like
hyphenated words - now
those are something I really
dislike, and to see the dumb
and foul use of hyphenated
words in what's supposed to
called 'poetry,' always bugged
me. I've seen people who would
hyphenate for the sake of doing
so; and I've seen others who
took some perverse pride in
what they wrote and who
adhered so strictly to their
formats and blocs, rhyme
schemes and rhythms that
they hyphenated pluralsitically
in ways more bizarre then the
word I just made up. Same
with any of those garden-variety,
mostly female or female the
emotional female wannabee,
cataclysmic, poetry-swoon
writers of 'Sonnets,' whose
rigid formulae strait-jacket
them into tightly linguistics
emotional overdoses.
-
Did you know that Phys-ics is
hyphenated one way, and that
Phy-sique another? Or that
Knowl-edge is hyphenated
after the 'I' and not before it?
Maybe a person can figure that
that stuff our for their own, yet
I rather doubt it and can only
sense that a true dedication
to words and writing - and
looking such things up - will
have one know about that.
Unlike that 14,00 scribblers
an hour online who submit
their grain of sand-poetry
to the strainer of boulder-sized-
holes filtering and end up with
the usual drivel about hearts
broken, twisted love, fake
politics and their own far-game
sexuality-cum-attitude.
(Pun there).
-
As Hayden Carruth noted, a
person correctly chooses
between such words as
streetcar, street-car, and
street car, without really
thinking of it; since the use
fits the usage. Not the form
itself being twisted to fit. One
doesn't actually 'learn' these
things; they're more or less
genetic and implanted as birth
to denote one as a 'writer' and
another as a 'not writer. 'I myself
have stumbled lots, even with
those basic and silly differences
between lay and lie, or who
and whom. I kind of agreed
with him too, when he put forth
the idea that the logical analysis
of the sort used by lexicographers
(determining the historical meanings
and stylistic attributes of words)
denotes a respect for the human
mind and for humanity in general.
He probably was right and the
'proof,'' as they say, 'is in the
pudding.' Just having to listen to
the manners of speech and the
spoken word today causes a
heart-failure. I've had phone
messages and personal transactions
wherein the usually young most
often (usually) female on the
other end rants and rages swiftly
through whatever it was she was
meant to be uttering, to the extent
that even after three or four
re-listens I'm left with no clue
what she meant to say or had been
babbling on about, And that's
only verbal/oral. God alone,
maybe, knows what that person
writes like. What's even more
amazing to me is that people
actually hire these sorts. Do their
bosses and supervisors have any
idea how they muck things up?
Have the effectiveness quotients
of things verbal - in today's mass
stupidity of an oral/screen culture
brought all these thing to a dead
impasse? The constant and then
self-consuming predeliction of
phones and hand-helds apparently
has taken control of the everyday.
Is there no longer any 'review' of
anything - since the doing and
not the result are now paramount?
-
I guess I've just turned into a crank.
Which leads me to wonder: Am I a
week-old man, or a weak, old man?
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