Babel: on obedience

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us…

Noticing, Day 16: make it new

Today, I notice that Ezra Pound's injunction to "Make it new" in writing plays out well in the English-language essays of students who are filtering their ideas through a different first language, drawing on thesauri and online translators to assist in the process of self-expression. Strangers to the rhythms and habits of English, yet familiar with the rules, they…

Worlds out of Words: Word-Wonder Day 29

Today is a re-post from just under a year ago, since I've been wondering over words much longer than this month, and since we build whole worlds, not simply sentences, stories, and songs, out of words. You can find the original post here. “People make worlds out of words.”* They do. I know it. I…

worlds out of words

“People make worlds out of words.”* They do. I know it. I have lived in those worlds, often and often, and they have taught me to make sense out of my own world, which is also, as it happens, made out of words, by the Word, beginning when God said, “Let there be light,” and…