There’s a new journal called Fou, that you should check out. The five Suzanne Buffam pieces from “Little Commentaries,” are delicious and small and surprising, like petit fours with a pinch of salt:
On Attachment
A house burns all night.
In the middle of a field.
A beautiful sight
Even if the burning house
Does happen to be mine.
Sooner or later
All burning houses will be mine.
Fou is not the only delightful thing to happen to me this week. On Wednesday at UMass I attended a lecture on linguistics. Gennaro Chierchia spoke about distinctions (and confusions) between mass nouns and count nouns. A count noun like “chair” will join happily with the plural morpheme, numbers, and both the indefinite and definite article–
chairs, two chairs, a chair, the chair
–while a mass noun like “blood” sits uncomfortably with all but the last:
bloods, two bloods, a blood, the blood
I’ve been thinking a lot about abstract nouns, and how they shift in meaning when they go from mass to count by becoming plural or indefinite. The move from mass to count also seems to make them smaller:
“She has power.” > “She has a power.”
“All the love in the world” > “All the loves in the world”
A good thing to do if you are bored (if, for example, you are at a lecture by a person who is not so exciting as Chierchia, perhaps a lecture on why you should buy fair trade coffee) is to rearrange your concepts of mass and count by messing with the articles and so forth. So when the speaker says “Fair trade certification means the work of the farmers is duly compensated,” try “Fair trade certification means a work of farmer is duly compensated.” Cut up “work” into pieces, and let “the farmers” blend into a substance. (It’s also helpful for poems, as stylistics scholars already know–when “grief” becomes “a grief,” exciting lines can happen.)
I first thought of the “powers” distinction because of working with elementary school students on wish poems. Two boys were talking about how best to phrase their desires to fly, be invisible, possess great speed, etc., and one of them said “You should just say ‘I wish for powers.'” I wonder at what point the wish shifts from the plural and specific to the singular and abstract.
I’ve been back at that same elementary school this month, surrounded by exciting minds and phrases. I’ll leave you with one of the most thrilling and direct examples of Frank O’Hara’s Personism that I can recall encountering. This piece is the work of a boy who had just realized how short a poem can be. It’s about his friend, whom I’ll call “Daniel.” (Other details have also been changed.)
Daniel
Five five five four two nine three.