the magic of language

[kassia]

Who make your favorite words? Are they poets, essayists, songwriters, storytellers?
Please give an example line or phrase or expression or excerpt for each, and say why you like it (importance of content? clarity of expression? beauty of articulation? some other combination of reasons?)

Comments

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

That sounds like work

[elbren]

fair's fair
i like twisted cliches:
"I will wake the dawn" Psalm 108:2
"I will not have peace on my hands" Annette Strean of Venus Hum

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

M. Doughty, former lead singer of Soul Coughing. He was a poet first, and I love his words and his voice. I could quote him all day. I guess I often do. "Normalize the signal and you're bangin' on freon, paleolithic eon, put the fake goatee on," I like his rhymes and his rhythms. I wouldn't rank him especially high on clarity, it's more about the ambiguity for me.

[elbren]

thanks

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

This dictionary, a sort of salvage operation of words drifting from dictionary language, may serve to moor the terminology of estuary English. It is, however, mostly a cruise through an archipelago of half-sunken dictionaries, reference works touched with the drop-line of summer inquiry by a scholar intrigued with the death of topographical curiosity among the young, the young, so absent from the marshes.

[elbren]

nice. made by you?

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

Nope. A quote from the best candidate I can think of for your question from amongst my (relatively) recent readings.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, entirely off-topic for this post, but hey, itty bitty cephalopods!

http://www.deviantart.com/view/22480360/

[elbren]

cutie!

[the-e.livejournal.com]

"she gave up on the ghost of a chance that he haunted"-- John Gorka
"he needs a lot of sleep 'cause he's got a lot of dreams" -- John Gorka

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

Another quote from another candidate from amongst my current readings.

June 6th. The time has come to cut the cabin down to size. First I filed the big saw. Then I trimmed the roof logs to the proper length. I trimmed the gable logs to the slope of the roof, and trimmed the wall logs on all four corners. What a difference! Log ends are all over the ground and the cabin is looking like a once-shaggy kid after a crew cut.

Now I have to start thinking about window and door frames, and the roof poles. I must find a stand of skinny timber for those. That means some prospecting in the standing lumberyards.

My cabin logs have magically changed form in the ten days since I cut the first notch. There are only four full-length logs left and only one of those is halfway decent. Before it's over, there will be a use for all of them.