Why use unfamiliar words, strange words, foreign words, words spelled with the Greek alphabet?
To show off – right?
Wrong. Not showing off – but showing out and in.
-Showing out to see the interrelationships of words with each other.
-Showing in to see the deep origins of words rooted in antiquity.
Language is our living inheritance, a treasure handed down from the ancestors. And even though new words are being invented every year, most words are very old. Take ‘mam’, for instance. Yes, mam! The cry of the first hungry human infant. Maaaaaaa. Mam comes from a large ancient family. Madame, dame, mammal, mammalian, mammary, mama, mom, mother, maternal, maternity, matrix, mater (L), matter, material. We see a word as standing alone by itself and forget that it comes with relatives. From Latin we find astre,’star’, giving us the obvious; astronomy, astrology, astronaut, astrophysics, but also disaster, against the stars. From the Greek words ‘naus’ – ship and ‘nautikos’ – sea faring, we find astronaut, cosmonaut, nautical, nautilus, as well as nausea, nauseous, nauseate. Like notes from a plucked harp string, these words resonate with each other, and even though we do not think about all this when we hear or speak a word, there is much reverberating below consciousness.
Poets try to work words as hard as they can, squeezing out every ounce of meaning, allowing every vibration and resonance to be heard.
Occasionally [see the poem ‘The Dead’] I use Greek words written with Greek letters. (Our word ‘alphabet’ comes from the first two Greek letters, ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’) Most readers will not understand these Greek words. Nor do they need to. Greek words were not used for meaning but for flavor. The odd letters remind us of the long journey our words have taken to get into our modern vocabularies. But meaning is important, so I provide definitions at the end of each poem. Sometimes foreign words carry meaning that English words do not.
Like the biblical Joseph and his colorful coat, every word wears a coat of many colors. Writing poetry carefully and reading poetry carefully can help us see and appreciate the polychromatic hue.