Number (February)

American poet Howard Nemerov was born February 29. His statistical poem ‘Life Cycle of Common Man’ lists “roughly figured” totals of things consumed by “this man of moderate habits” in a lifetime: “Just under half a million cigarettes/ Four thousand fifths of gin.” The Fifties is another country. Nemerov wonders about the tally of words his anti-hero ever used, quantifying thus: “If you merely printed all his commas the result/ Would be a very large volume.” Distillation is good reason for poetry. Nemerov spells his numbers, assisting pronunciation, but statistical poems are a sub-genre, their surprises short-lived, their scansion forced.

Footnote (February)

What is February 29? Is it like the other 365 paragraphs of the yearbook? Or a surprise footnote, facts to be included that don’t quite fit the text’s mundane logic? Lost in footnotes we follow the walking track, gaze about, wondering who was born here, and who died. For its duration, February 29 is the only place to be. Footnotes are (in fact) logical, remind us that all our reading is footnotes, our own thoughts kickstarted by words. Our mind is a thousand hands and feet pointing in other directions, our seasonal variations. But then the text resumes its March.

Hash (February)

‘The famous gesture of tearing one’s page from the typewriter, by which writers or journalists elevate themselves to the status of Wild West heroes drawing their six-shooters.’ This sentence of Jean Baudrillard was written before 1995. What does the writer do now? Release Instagrams of himself pressing the Send icon for his new novel? Post the news to Facebook with February loud on Life Event? Keyboards have relegated typewriters to the Wild West. Then there’s the kitten who, unbeknownst has hiked across the writer’s qwerty at High Noon, leaving in its wake a masterpiece of hash asterisk smallbbbbbbbbbbb underscore capslockNGDTEANDHU…

Misspelling (February)

On 26^th February Trump tweeted, ‘Wow, every poll said I won the debate last night. Great honer!’ Perhaps he’s bragging about his axe skills. Trump’s a man of his word, a man of honer. He spells it that way, which will be fun in a court of law: ‘Yes, Your Honer!’ He’s worth a billion dolours, which is why he wants to be the Pressdent of the Unnoted Staples of Amourica. Speaking of Amour, love letters to femails everywhere are being cerealised at the Notional Suckyourity Agentsee. If Snowden Two leaks the swalky contents it will show Tramp’s human side.

Portmanteau (February)

‘The turrises of the sabines are televisible.’ Finnegans Wake is one big travelling bag of portmanteaux. Even common words are reconverted, so inhabitants become ‘the unhappitents of the earth’, living ‘between antediluvious and annodominant’, where earth is ‘solarsystemised, seriolcosmically’. Joyce knew Jung; he joked about ‘the law of the jungerl’: ‘she jist does hopes till byes will be byes.’ Portmanteau’s a compound of French carry plus mantle, which is how words work. Born in a February Week, Joyce was a compounder and citer who thought ‘the world’s a cell for citters to cit in’ and ‘that’s what makes life-work leaving.’

Capital (February)

C is for Capital. Did the pilcrow morph from Capital C during the Renaissance? Scribes and printers enforced Capitals to head sentences and it’s been that way ever ever since. E.E. Cummings popularised the overthrow, or unenforcing, of Capitals. Even ever to write his name using Capitals is done with nervous boldness, as though Lowercase is its own country and everyone everywhere lowercases around here thanks. Edward Estlin Cummings was never going to polarise opinion. We need to know where we start and a sentence the length of February is best left to people who know how to indicate breath.

One (February)

One has never seen anything quite like it. One can never be quite sure, can one? We have never been one to avoid a challenge. We know one when we see one. It takes one to know one. One has been here before. One example will have to suffice. One heard saxophone in the laneway. One noticed red lettering on the skyline. One has spoken with Thou and Herself endlessly. One is at the end of one’s tether. One has had a gutful. One should quit while one is ahead. One February all of this will be a bad dream.

Bracket (February)

Written in February 1832, ‘Cielo’ is the centrepiece of Lucio Luciano’s Sequenza Celeste, a series of poems describing his tempestuous relationship with artist-philosopher Maria Notte. Eleven five-line verses enunciate the lover’s relief from present torment by sky-gazing. (3) “diamante fiamma”, rubies were La Notte’s favourite gem. (8) “Torre degli Asinelli”, a common site for suicides in Bologna. (21) The bracket opens a rapturous three-verse encomium for the sky. Light irony is employed enclosing something that cannot be bracketed, while the poet is trapped with his passions. (35) Close brackets. (42) “nebbia”, literally, the fog of Emilia-Romagna, metaphorically, the lover’s forgetfulness.

Paragraph (February)

Tribute to Umberto Eco. This is his sentence: 5^th January 1932-19^th February 2016. “Begin new paragraphs often. Do so when logically necessary, and when the pace of the text requires it, but the more you do it, the better.” He gives this advice in his little book ‘How To Write a Thesis’. Some people criticise Eco for being verbose, abstracted, digressive and other human traits. Yet writing is the progress of thought, even at its most experimental. Enjoyment is in tune with the attention span. It relishes the bon mot and the chunk that cannot be reduced further. Paragraphs rule.

Conjunction (February)

Conjunctions are the most wieldy of the words. Their ability to enhance, extend, change, transform, and explain the meaning eases the effort of communication. Advanced or sensitive or intuitive users find that elision of the conjunction increases effect. One phrase follows another as obviously as January follows December and February follows January, without recourse to the implied but or nevertheless or so. The return to work after Christmas-New Year follows logically. The noise on first day of school is loud and bright. Necessity, though, enforces use of a because or an and or a therefore in the majority of communication.

Consonant (February)

Poets are not alone in being enamoured with how words prove consonant with that which they name. February languidly meanders and Jupiter seems perfect choice for a gas giant. Consonants provide a lifetime of sound equations and summations. Glossolalia’s another story. Speakers talk in tongues no-one understands, including themselves, thus contradicting the aural reports of the first Pentecost. No-one knows what month it is or if the words are from Mars. Poets and non-poets alike require new sets of consonants for unknown sounds. Transcription proves impossible, let alone translation, which isn’t to say glossolalia is not consonant with the Spirit.

Infinitive (February)

‘To deliberately split the infinitive’ is, it may be said, no different from ‘deliberately to split the infinitive’ or ‘to split the infinitive deliberately’. Zealots for Fowler, keen to divide the world into splitters and non-splitters, mayn’t have read the original scripture, which reasons subtly when to unsafely split the infinitive. Five closely argued columns circle around this sentence: “We maintain, however, that a real s.i., though not desirable in itself, is preferable to either of two things, to real ambiguity, and to patent artificiality.” To usefully spend February refreshing our knowledge of usage is one of life’s minor pleasures.

Vowel (February)

They’re openings peculiar to our directions, their prosaic existence reminder of the birth of flesh. Their very airiness is oxygen of a blue-wrapped planet, air consonants depend on through constant attraction. Blush puts vowels out there, cheek of them, wonders of throat’s dexterity. Distinct is the stuff of their music, as in the four notes of February, acrobatic as acrobatic, dogged as dog. Even gaunt withdrawal will break silence, and silence is where we wait. We give small thought to how it all will close, refined words, loud owes, a cough, groans. You hear the profuse confessions, the least loneliness.

Hyphen (February)

Good Weekend Profile: Harriet ‘Dash’ Lepanto. What’s for breakfast? Corn Flakes with chopped banana. Konsumer Kafé is my just favourite you know place and they do perfect Corn Flakes. Hair of the dog? A long glass of vodka with a shot of Provencal blackcurrant liqueur. Favourite word? Black. Colour? Snow-white or pale-mulberry. Punctuation mark? The hyphen, because it’s the hyphen. Red-hot. Roly-poly. Soft-spoken. Straight-laced. Time-consuming. Empty-handed. Far-flung. Far-off. Half-mast. Mind-boggling. Nitty-gritty. Do I need to continue? No. T-shirt. Reading? ‘February is the Shortest Month’, isn’t everyone? On the player? Peter, Paul, and Mary on permanent loop. Any last words? Anvil.

Virgule (February)

Good Weekend Profile: Harry ‘Dot’ Lapunto. What’s for breakfast? Poached quail eggs with spinach toast in drizzled modena, with water-speckled rocket and cracked pepper. Hair of the dog? A nifty sauvignon blanc with eucalypt notes from my uncle’s 500-acre hobby outside Adelaide. Favourite word? February. Colour? Black. Punctuation mark? The virgule, of course, in all its variations, hanging from a line through the grocers’ apostrophe. ‘Virgula’ is the working title of my next movie. Reading? The complete works of Sir Walter Scott. On the player? The Plastic People of the Universe. Any last words? End. Final. Over. Finis. Full stop. 

Adjective (February)

Medbh McGuckian’s adjectives are words we know, or thought we knew. “It was a fragrant December,” when survival of planetary life depends on bees. Medbh might say things differently in Lenten February. “A grey trembling flame left the ceilings/ in profound darkness,” could be going out. “A skintight coat of mail,” sounds impossible before we notice her “coat” is the overcoming of desire. An artist paints a “night-scene, marked by his opalescent touch.”  She knows how it is being a poet, “brave in the next-to-nothing of a line.” Writes of “the churchish skyline,” which isn’t even a word, until now.