Category: More Water Than Words

When To Say No[t]

IMG_7984Angela Nardin sings “The Nearness of You” by Ned Washington and Hoagey Carmichael at Hudson River Music Hall on September 17, 2017

It’s not always the evanescent wonder of words that entices readers. It’s just knowing when to say “no[t].”

It wasn’t just Hoagey Carmichael’s ear for a tune that made “The Nearness of You” a hit in pre-WWII America; it was lyricist Ned Washington’s use of litotes, the figure of speech that turns a negative into a positive: “It’s not the pale moon that excites me, / that thrills and delights me, / oh, no. It’s just the nearness of you.” The negation of beauty is paradoxically enhanced by the understatement of a positive. This technique is useful for poets–actually, for sane and savvy folks of all stripes these days.

Paradox makes for fine poetry, particularly when prose falls prey to prevarication.

When current events fuel your ire, or when you just want to praise someone you love, take a stab at litotes. And enjoy this short clip of SUNY Adirondack music student Angela Nardin at vimeo.com/240616709.

Trailer for More Water Than Words

Keening from Kathleen McCoy on Vimeo. Chapbook More Water Than Words by Kathleen McCoy, Finishing Line Press, 2017. Thanks to Marilyn McCabe for the tutorial on using iMovie.

 

 

Blue Holidays

Cookies, candles, cards, and cash . . . with all our running amuck
at the holidays, it’s easy to forget those who have grieved in the past year, or who grieve most at the holidays. more-waterThis year, before you pack up or sit back for your joyful holiday, please remember friends who quietly hunker down in blue corners behind the silver and gold. What can help them? A shoulder, a note, a cup o’ joe or tea . . . and poetry.

More Water Than Words is a chapbook in which “death is considered . . . in the mythical realm of change and possibility” (Marilyn McCabe). Preorders have been extended to Monday, December 26th for this plunge into imagination where an island disappears and reemerges, sheep change color, green trees burst into flame, and “even smudges on glass take on the visage of a lost loved one.” I’m grateful to Finishing Line Press for accepting these poems and publishing them, with one condition: I have to meet a minimum number of preorders, and I’m short. If you can help someone you know in 2017, you’ll also be helping poems enter the world at their appointed time.

Happy holidays to you. May your days be more vibrant, musical, and peaceful than blue, and may you find a poem or two that speak to you.

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