Loquacious: "Bungalow" by Lené Gary

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. This week, the lovely Lené Gary, writer and poet, rolls around in the sound and meaning of one of her favorite words: bungalow. I adore Lené's sensibility and am so happy to bring you this sweet tidbit from her.

Bungalow

By Lené Gary

I don't know if it's the belly of the "b" or the cradled sling of the "g". . .

or the slippery tide I imagine washing sand under the fog on an early morning walk on the beach near my bungalow. Yes, my bungalow. That low-pitched roof of a small nest on a high cliff nestled in a sea of lavender dashed, big-petaled, perennial-thickened, Pacific air tempered garden near the railroad tracks. Nasturtium blooms will drape dips in the fence ― those barely rubbed pickets of white-seashell-washed wooden markers, noting ever so subtly the transition between here and there, between the sidewalk and front yard and front door (of my bungalow). Doesn't it make you want to stay? Want to pick lemons from the tree? Echinacea from the garden? Doesn't it make you want to lie back in the soft canvas cocoon of a veranda-hung hammock? Doesn't it make you want to read books? Hard covered, hand oiled, soft leather spined, patina-toned books (the kind only grandmothers have for their grandchildren)?

Me too. I want to go back to the bungalow of which I dreamed when I would walk the eroding cliff roads of Santa Cruz. The kind of home a surfer's feet pass when returning to his oblong, happy can with wheels ― the VW van with the tie-dyed, gently-pulled-closed curtains parked in the only spot left. Our street might not have a name, a sign I should say, for all the times that the sign has been stolen. You know you're in a good spot when everyone works to keep it a secret.

That's the place of the bungalow. In my heart. In my mind. A word I cannot let go of for the sound of the surf in my ear; it inspires, lets me believe, beyond all rationale, that there is a place held safe in my dream. And a place that holds my dream safely. A secret. Where I can breathe. Literally. Where I can be well, feel the ocean, smell the flowers, hear the birds, and read.

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Lené Gary is a poet and writer living in Montpelier, Vermont. Her work has appeared in Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont, Poemeleon, Limestone, Six Little Things, Watershed, M Review, Pecan Grove Review, Silkworm, Crash, Connotation Press, Grandmother Earth, SAGE, Vermont Nature, KNOCK, and The Poet’s Touchstone. She holds a dual-genre MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. When she’s not writing, she can be found paddling her well-worn, Mad River canoe.

Loquacious: "One of my Favorite Words" by Rebecca Macijseki

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. In this installment, poet and writer Rebecca Macijeski tackles the question, "What is one of your favorite words?" I love the way Rebecca ― as a person and as a poet ― combines her playful sense of humor, her deep connection to language, and her highly intelligent brain. The result is utterly delightful.

One of my Favorite Words

By Rebecca Macijeski

There are many words that I love. Green. And sneakers. Thistles. And Meriwether. And shoehorns. And raspberries. And the white smoothing over the knuckles at my hands.

I will write poems all my life to celebrate the underappreciated quirkiness in words like rhododendron and semi-gloss and yo-yos and death certificates. So many poems linger in the comfortable heat of bougainvillea and sea shores and cinnamon. When I write words I am eating their sounds. My teeth get into their juice and their squishy pulp and before I know it I'm caught with the beautiful red stains on my palms. From picking strawberries. From bending over and picking each ripe, irregular round from the low-lying vines.

Can I pick one favorite? Can I choose one word to celebrate above all the other words? Does one have more electricity?

Lately I've been making lists of the words I use over and over again. You could say I'm obsessed with them. I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm always writing poems with brain in them, along with smiles and sandwiches, things that curve, tall grass, and mouths. Maybe I pick them because it's July ― I have been writing a lot of warm things. Maybe I write when I'm hungry. Could that explain the sandwiches and the mouths?

It is difficult to separate words from my feelings about them. I tend to dislike the idea that words are distinct, abstract units that have no relation to the real people and places and things they represent. I concede that there are a few clinical-sounding words that serve more like vitamins than the slow-roasted meals I want them to be. Not all words are red and juicy. Some feel and taste a little like chalk ― octogenarian, for example. An octogenarian is someone with eighty years of stories and experiences. Octogenarian speaks nothing at all to the reverence earned through the dozens of clam bakes, countless birthdays, weddings, and funerals, tears, shared moments, stubbed toes, meat loaves, UFO sightings, cups of tea, tourist photographs, sleepless nights, and friends that build a life.

So, I’ve been circuitous ― or, perhaps, I've been surreptitious. That's a good favorite. Surreptitious. I remember learning that word for the first time. "What a delightfully pompous way of saying 'sneaky,'" I thought to myself. The word starts with that slinking S,
 and then opens fully into a syrup sound. Then, as if embarrassed by how silly it's become, the word ends with an elite and academic itious.

"There," the word must think to itself after it all. "That should fool her."

You see. This is what happens when I consider my relationship with language: I end up with circles and lists. Interestingly, this reflects the shape of my most recent poems, my poems want to hold everything inside them. They want to categorize and complete. Maybe that's what dictates the repeating. If a poem is a snapshot of the unconscious, or a representation of thought, or a transcript of my dialogue with my own mind ― all variations on the same idea ― then it makes sense that I'd be pursuing the same words. I'm trying, over and over again, to write the same poem, the poem that says everything there is to say about thistles and smiles and curving strawberry vines.

Of course this is impossible, but I know I will always try. With each attempt I learn too much to ever want to stop trying.

Such a silly brain. Tricking me into seeing the newness of each recycled thought. Such a silly, wonderful, surreptitious brain.

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Rebecca Macijeski earned an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in July 2011. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Salon, Lullwater Review, and Clackamas Literary Review. She currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Hunger Mountain.

Loquacious (a "wordy" series): The Sensuous Life of Language

I want to be a word. I would be abstract

with an inscrutable ending.
Anna Moschovakis, "Untitled"

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. I'm kicking it off with a (slightly modified) excerpt from my essay "The Secret Life of Language" (which began life as a lecture). As the series progresses, I'll share more of my thoughts on all things wondeful and wordy (worderful?), plus some fantastic guest posts from other word lovers (a.k.a. "wordies," which are the literary compatriots of "foodies").

The Sensuous Life of Language

By Jennifer McGuiggan

I once read the word ambergris, which is a noun from the French for "amber grey." It refers to the mysterious substance that is prized as a fixative in perfume and believed to originate in the intestines of sperm whales. It's a fascinating noun, but I didn’t think much about whales or perfume when I read it. Instead, my mind played hopscotch with the letters in ambergris, and I landed on aubergine, also a French word, but one I connect to England, as it's the British term for eggplant. I don't really like eggplant. Its texture is too spongy for my taste; its purply-black skin too rich a jewel tone for my preferred color palette. I like the word eggplant a bit more than I like the fruit. The word makes a dull, but satisfying, thud upon my tongue ― egg-plant ― and comes rolling out like a―well, like an egg. But aubergine is sexy, something voluptuous and spicy, like a nice glass of Shiraz. Aubergine is a word I love more than the thing itself. I savor the way it sounds, for the way my mouth moves when I say it, for the way the word itself tastes.

I learned the word aubergine when I lived in England, where I also learned alternate words for other objects in the produce aisle, such as courgette for zucchini and swede ― which the dictionary now tells me is British for rutabaga (itself a fun word) ― but which I could have sworn referred to some sort of melon. And there we are again. Melon: something I love as much for its wordness as its thingness. To me, the mellifluous sounds of melon taste just as good, if not better, than an actual slice of slippery, cool cantaloupe or honeydew.

For language lovers, the taste, sound, and feel of words is at least as important as their meanings. We writers have a sensuous relationship with language. People often say that the poets know this best, but I think that slights us prose writers. I may be after a good story when I read or write prose, but I'm also after sentences that unfurl in my mouth and mind like the edible, golden bloom of the zucchini ― or, courgette ― flower.

One of my favorite unfurling sentences comes from the novel Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen, a book about a young nun who may or may not be experiencing mystical trances that mark her body with stigmata. Here's the sentence: "Each prayer grayly feathering from her mouth" (139). If we're going to get technical about things, it's not a true sentence because a gerund ("feathering") occupies the space where a verb would otherwise sit. But it's a beautiful, sensuous sentence in which the sounds perfectly match the imagery: "Each prayer grayly feathering from her mouth."

We tend to think of language as an intellectual faculty, but we first enter into language bodily, not mentally. As young children, we don't consciously study syntax or grammar, or memorize dictionary pages to learn words. Instead, we learn to speak by listening, by making sounds, by imitating what we see and hear others doing.

Here's another passage that's too delicious to pass up. It's from Eudora Welty in One Writer's Beginnings. She's describing her childhood visits to her grandparents' farm:

Barefooted on the slick brick walk I rushed to where I could breathe in the cool breath from the interior of the springhouse. On a cold, bubbling spring, covered dishes and crocks and pitchers of butter and milk and so on floated in a circle in the mild whirlpool, like horses on a merry-go-round in the water that smelled of the mint that grew close by. (65) 

This passage just tastes good to me, and makes me feel like I'm with Welty in that springhouse, smelling the mint. I enter the words on the page not just mentally, but bodily. I wonder what Welty's grandparents kept on those covered dishes and crocks. Probably not aubergines or courgettes, but a girl can dream.