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GROWL AND COO.

November 26, 2012 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

 

The term “onomatopoeia” evoked giggling in the grade-school classroom where our teacher first wrote it on the blackboard. I did not take it seriously until I studied English literature at the graduate level, where I learned many critical theorists argue there is no definable reality; all is subjective, especially language. How I understand a word—“table,” for instance—is different from how Persons A, B, and C understand it. Literature, for many such thinkers, is an exercise in self-reflexivity—charmingly mellifluous and sometimes poignantly suggesting our inability to understand each other, but ultimately no reliable bridge of communication.

I never felt convinced by such theorists. English, like many other languages, features hundreds of onomatopoeic words, such as “snap,” “bang,” “buzz,” “splash,” “boom,” “hiss,” “chirp,” “burp,” “ping,” “growl,” “gobble,” “giggle,” “click,” and “coo.” Other words are slightly less imitative yet still onomatopoeic: for example, “spank,” “spangle,” “bark,” “spark,” “puppy,” “snip,” “burst,” “lash,” “quick,” and “rip.” Such words illustrate the connection between denotative meaning and sense perception of a physical world beyond the mind. Admittedly, the theorists made me think more deeply about language. Surely, “angle” might sound like “spangle,” yet the two are denotatively dissimilar. “Bark” to describe a dog’s aggressive voice is imitative, but what about as the coating of a tree trunk? Indeed, language is complex, and understanding its evolution entails exploring the million streams that feed its river.

Surely, too, many onomatopoeic words are snappily monosyllabic and thus seem to belong to a special class. Yet, “see-saw,” “wishy-washy,” “susurrus,” “sizzle,” “fizzle,” “babble,” “gurgle,” and many others suggest polysyllabic onomatopoeia frequently tints our language. And where is literature without vivid description and attention to tone and resonance, to a reader’s physical, gut-level reaction? Language is not a simple phenomenon; sometimes language is disconnected from the senses, but sometimes it is deeply connected, and a skillful writer knows how to exploit that connection. After all, no honest critical theorist could deny “buzz” sounds like what it describes.

Moreover, respect for the connection between language and the physical world entails ethical accountability. One might murder dissidents and claim one represents “freedom” and “the people,” but this would be the sort of manipulation about which George Orwell warned us. One can argue the rich should help the inner-city poor, but if data about the poor is mere illusion, then what responsibility remains? If one ignores a ghetto’s broken windows, syringes in the gutter, gunshot victims’ wounds, glass-shard-littered playfields, shuttered storefronts, and rat-infested flats, then why argue the rich should help the poor? It’s a contradiction to say the senses are too flawed to trust, and that language is disconnected from physical reality, yet the rich should help the poor. Throw away sense data and language denoting matter, and how would we learn about poor people in the first place? And what about poor people who work hard to feed their children? Should they ignore their children’s cries and needs as mere illusions?

“Reality” also entails other people’s emotions. Most people wound easily, and this can undermine confidence. When I worked as a college instructor, I would not say to a struggling student, “You’re a stupid failure,” but “Feel welcome to visit me during my office hours to discuss the next assignment” or “You’re essay shows improvement over your last effort—and you could improve even more.”  Empathy is based on respect for real experiences and emotions of real people. Without it, what kind of compassion could we show one another? Why bother to cultivate tact if one does not believe others’ circumstances and feelings are real?

Critical theorists often revile the term “reality” as an intolerant presumption. Yet, it can remind us to empathize, consider, love, and improve. It can remind us to assess honestly, not simply see what we want to see. It can remind us to mitigate harsh candor with the honey of tact. And it can remind us, through onomatopoeia, how experience flows through imagination and can emerge as poetry, and poetry’s power can be as physical as a breeze, a storm, a midnight candle. Indeed, poetry can splash, boom, whisper, hiss, chirp, and coo.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2012: Words

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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