“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.” Emily Dickinson
Ain’t it the truth! Beautiful words, especially words that capture heart or color or passion endure. Words like “honey” (the bee kind); “Daydream”, not a night dream but the bible’s promise: “Your young men shall see visions and your old men dream dreams.” (Joel 2:28) Words like “crimson and ebony” fashion colors in the imagination that push the limits of “black” or “red.”
What about verbs? Take, for example, the statement “I was enthralled.” It makes me want to ask, enthralled by what? By whom? Read any of the great writers –Hemingway, Mark Twain and John Updike come to mind–and you’ll find that the energy in their writings comes from their” use of powerful verbs. Gerard Manley Hopkins, the nineteenth century poet, used verbs and verb forms that jump up at you when his words are spoken out-loud:
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed….” (The first lines of “God’s Grandeur.)
A word lives on when it is heard, remembered and spoken again, repeated by the listener. Emily wanted us to know that.
Incidentally, I still think three words make up the most powerful statement in language: I love you. When the whole sentence is spoken with passion and truth, there is no more powerful moment in the life of the listener than hearing those words. There is no emptiness like those words being spoken to deceive the listener.
Or, as Mr. Rogers might say: “It’s you I like.” By the way, isn’t that a strange way to say “I like you?” Is Mr. Rogers emphasizing that although there a lot of kids out there, he is choosing me to like?” Words are alive.