"At the Berkeley Free Speech Cafe"
by Thomas R. Moore
The students are seated,
one to a table,
at tables for two,
ears wired,
laptops humming,
cell phones buzzing,
fingers texting,
iPods thumping,
toes drumming,
email flashing,
lattés cooling,
textbooks open,
reading for an exam
in Issues in Contemporary Culture 102.
Such a simple, yet biting poem about our modern day priorities. And I think I love the poet because his name is similar to that of St. Thomas More, the lawyer-saint.
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Pretty Words
"Language is wine upon the lips." -Virginia Woolf
This post is devoted to two short writings -- one prose, one poetry -- that I have recently found inspiring. My soul is moved more by beautiful words than beautiful music (though music is a very close second). If I read, however, a clever or provocative phrase, I feel giddy, like a little child who has found a precious new toy.
An excerpt from a reflection by Francois Mauriac, a Nobel Prize winning Catholic writer...
"We know that there is a difference between human hope and spiritual hope. We may lose all hope for the temporal salvation of mankind and still await the kingdom of God... But it must not be concluded from this that our hope concerns only eternity; it also concerns the dark world of the living. For the crimes of the will to power which sum up temporal history do not prevent the leaven of which Christ speaks from working tirelessly in the human mass. The fire which He came to cast upon the earth is always smoldering and the bloodiest years of history are nevertheless years of grace."
A poem by Marietta Martin, entitled "Poem of Hope"...
One day there will be no more unexpressed words of love,
There will be no more stifled desires,
There will be no more silent presences: all the voices will be heard,
The veil which the music lifts will never more be lowered,
There will be no more inaccessible space, and
the spool of time will unwind in the present,
All the sister particles of the soul will join together.
The sunsets will be explained,
Beauty will lose its anguish,
Creation will be the clear word of divinity,
One day, like a beautiful voyage toward the beloved dead.
"Words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within." -Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This post is devoted to two short writings -- one prose, one poetry -- that I have recently found inspiring. My soul is moved more by beautiful words than beautiful music (though music is a very close second). If I read, however, a clever or provocative phrase, I feel giddy, like a little child who has found a precious new toy.
An excerpt from a reflection by Francois Mauriac, a Nobel Prize winning Catholic writer...
"We know that there is a difference between human hope and spiritual hope. We may lose all hope for the temporal salvation of mankind and still await the kingdom of God... But it must not be concluded from this that our hope concerns only eternity; it also concerns the dark world of the living. For the crimes of the will to power which sum up temporal history do not prevent the leaven of which Christ speaks from working tirelessly in the human mass. The fire which He came to cast upon the earth is always smoldering and the bloodiest years of history are nevertheless years of grace."
A poem by Marietta Martin, entitled "Poem of Hope"...
One day there will be no more unexpressed words of love,
There will be no more stifled desires,
There will be no more silent presences: all the voices will be heard,
The veil which the music lifts will never more be lowered,
There will be no more inaccessible space, and
the spool of time will unwind in the present,
All the sister particles of the soul will join together.
The sunsets will be explained,
Beauty will lose its anguish,
Creation will be the clear word of divinity,
One day, like a beautiful voyage toward the beloved dead.
"Words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within." -Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Living Thought
"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used." -Justice Holmes
Language. Sentences, phrases, words, syllables.
I have always loved them. I am the eldest child, so when I was little my parents did not have many baby books. But they did have books -- lots of them. My mother would choose one that had pictures and make up stories about them. I would sit quietly for long periods of time listening, listening, listening. Of course, when my brother came along and could not sit still for more than thirty seconds to listen to a story, my mom was baffled. "I thought I was such a perfect mother because you were so easy!" she has said to me on a few occasions. My brother, as it turns out, has become quite the reader as well, though I do not think he will ever have enough books to make his entire closet collapse under their weight... (Oh gosh, did that really happen??)
I think I knew I wanted to be an English major since before I knew what a college major was. Reading books? Yes. When I arrived at college and learned there was specifically a Creative Writing track within the English major I said, "YES, PLEASE!" Though so many of the stories we read in class dealt with the extremes -- either silly love stories that sound like Taylor Swift songs in prose or sexually explicit "art" -- there were gems. Those classes made me write and edit and write and edit...
I always knew language was a powerful medium. Journalism, political documents, books filled with moral lessons. I wanted to be a part of it.
Then I realized I needed to pay rent and feed myself something besides peanut butter and jelly everyday. Hence, law school. Also something I've been wanting to do since... forever... or at least since high school.
Reading court opinions and law school text books is certainly not the same as reading 1984, but the language is so very precise and so very ambiguous all at the same time. When preparing for mock trial in my Torts class, I got excited if I realized the special importance of a word or phrase and how to use that to the advantage of my client in oral argument. Reading Justice Scalia's opinions are especially fun because of the emphasis he puts on the specific language of statutes or regulations. It leads you to really think... what is in a word? How clear is it really? Gosh, darn it, what does "modify" really mean? Can you really write pages about the definition of one word? Yes, and the Supreme Court does.
As my Contracts professor says, "Judges are telling stories." Their written opinions contain legal rules and reasoning, but in the end it's the story that matters. As my Reg. State professor says, "There is no right and wrong answer, just better arguments." As John Quincy Adams says in the movie Amistad, "Whoever tells the best story wins."
Is language really that malleable? Is it all shades of gray? As someone who believes in Truth, I find it hard to believe that words can mean almost anything you want them to mean... and yet, as a creative writer, I love their nuances. In the end, it's our varying interpretations and biases that give words shades of meaning... But how, then, do we communicate with each other? Yes, we use this language called English (with which I am currently writing)... and I am confident that if you are reading this post, you can understand its language... So there must be some black and white behind all that gray. If there was not, we would still be communicating with grunts and pointing fingers. I will admit and allow for linguistic ambiguity and evolution, but words do have inherent definitions and meanings -- language would be pointless without providing a solid medium with which to communicate.
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be the master, that's all.'"
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Language. Sentences, phrases, words, syllables.
I have always loved them. I am the eldest child, so when I was little my parents did not have many baby books. But they did have books -- lots of them. My mother would choose one that had pictures and make up stories about them. I would sit quietly for long periods of time listening, listening, listening. Of course, when my brother came along and could not sit still for more than thirty seconds to listen to a story, my mom was baffled. "I thought I was such a perfect mother because you were so easy!" she has said to me on a few occasions. My brother, as it turns out, has become quite the reader as well, though I do not think he will ever have enough books to make his entire closet collapse under their weight... (Oh gosh, did that really happen??)
I think I knew I wanted to be an English major since before I knew what a college major was. Reading books? Yes. When I arrived at college and learned there was specifically a Creative Writing track within the English major I said, "YES, PLEASE!" Though so many of the stories we read in class dealt with the extremes -- either silly love stories that sound like Taylor Swift songs in prose or sexually explicit "art" -- there were gems. Those classes made me write and edit and write and edit...
I always knew language was a powerful medium. Journalism, political documents, books filled with moral lessons. I wanted to be a part of it.
Then I realized I needed to pay rent and feed myself something besides peanut butter and jelly everyday. Hence, law school. Also something I've been wanting to do since... forever... or at least since high school.
Reading court opinions and law school text books is certainly not the same as reading 1984, but the language is so very precise and so very ambiguous all at the same time. When preparing for mock trial in my Torts class, I got excited if I realized the special importance of a word or phrase and how to use that to the advantage of my client in oral argument. Reading Justice Scalia's opinions are especially fun because of the emphasis he puts on the specific language of statutes or regulations. It leads you to really think... what is in a word? How clear is it really? Gosh, darn it, what does "modify" really mean? Can you really write pages about the definition of one word? Yes, and the Supreme Court does.
As my Contracts professor says, "Judges are telling stories." Their written opinions contain legal rules and reasoning, but in the end it's the story that matters. As my Reg. State professor says, "There is no right and wrong answer, just better arguments." As John Quincy Adams says in the movie Amistad, "Whoever tells the best story wins."
Is language really that malleable? Is it all shades of gray? As someone who believes in Truth, I find it hard to believe that words can mean almost anything you want them to mean... and yet, as a creative writer, I love their nuances. In the end, it's our varying interpretations and biases that give words shades of meaning... But how, then, do we communicate with each other? Yes, we use this language called English (with which I am currently writing)... and I am confident that if you are reading this post, you can understand its language... So there must be some black and white behind all that gray. If there was not, we would still be communicating with grunts and pointing fingers. I will admit and allow for linguistic ambiguity and evolution, but words do have inherent definitions and meanings -- language would be pointless without providing a solid medium with which to communicate.
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be the master, that's all.'"
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
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