The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “language”

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name

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Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence
Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence

“The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language.”

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The Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated
The Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated

“A metaphor is language that simultaneously creates and solves its own riddle; within that minute explosion of mind is both expansion and release… It is how the mind instructs itself in a more complex seeing.”

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William Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind
William Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind

How the ability to call your idea “by various names, borrowed from various languages,” empowers you to conceive that idea “in a way precise, clear and unconfused.”

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The Great 19th-Century Biologist and Anatomist T.H. Huxley on Darwin’s Legacy and What Makes Us Human
The Great 19th-Century Biologist and Anatomist T.H. Huxley on Darwin’s Legacy and What Makes Us Human

In praise of the faculty “making every generation somewhat wiser than its predecessor, — more in accordance with the established order of the universe.”

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A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith

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Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious
Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious

“Metaphor can create a merciful sense of distance from the cruel idea, or the unspeakable truth, and allow it to exist within us as a kind of poetic radiance, as a work of art.”

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Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing
Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing

“As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas… a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change.”

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How to Punctuate with Style: Lewis Thomas’s Charming Meditation on the Subtleties of Language
How to Punctuate with Style: Lewis Thomas’s Charming Meditation on the Subtleties of Language

“If you want to use a cliché you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society.”

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The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature
The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature

From acorn to wren, a vibrant encyclopedia of enchantments reweaving our broken web of belonging with the rest of nature.

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