What does that mean? Nothing, of course, But doesn’t
it sound like it means something? That’s part of the charm
of poetry. Poetry often shapes plain language into strange formations that contradict meaning while at the same time suggesting alternant meaning. There are many examples
in the poetry of e e cummings.
There are many similar examples in the miss-matches
of malaprops. Not poetry, but a sort of embarrassing second-cousin.
“My friend, Cathy, has a long-time friend, Vinnie.
She calls Vinnie's language Vinglish. Cathy could only remember a couple of Vinnie's malaprops:
- I wouldn't want to be in his feet.
- He's walking on thin water.
Cathy says he's always very close but misses it. Also, when he texts her, she's never sure if it's AutoCorrect or Vinnie”.
These malapropisms if set in a poem would seem clever wordplay, intended to tweak the mind into rethinking meaning from the twist of cliché. Water and ice, so much the same, except you can’t walk on water. Feet, shoes, nearly the same in context but feet is so much more personal than shoes. It pumps new vitality into tired language.
Children do the same when they turn words and names that are new to them into words and names they think more sensible. The young son of a friend of mine transformed “bunny rabbit” into “ boney rocket” Much more descriptive. My own son, at the same age, described whatever he thought silly as, “really-diculous”. Almost right, maybe stronger and more clear than “ridiculous”.
Poetry does it on purpose.
Malapropisms do it by accident.
Children do it by intuition.
What they say pushes us into thinking about what we’d stopped thinking about.
A friend of mine has taken to hearing sounds as words.
As water drained out of an aluminum can into the sink, she heard “dabodee canka”. The sound of opening the fridge became the words, “squeaky hinge”. Windshield wipers started saying “brooks nannies” over and over.
She thought she might be edging toward dementia.
I thought it less alarming. Humans have a built-in inclination to make reason out of randomness. We see birds and castles in slowly shifting clouds. We imagine brooks to be “babbling”, when they’re more accurately just plopping and splashing. “babbling brooks” has become such a common expression we no longer hear it as poetic anthropomorphism.
“Brooks babble, everyone knows that”, but everyone didn’t know that before some poet first said it. So it is with the many relationships of words, meanings, and sounds.
I think that’s all to the good. How dull it would be if everything were cut, dried, and perfectly clear.
Could “anyone” mean everyone, what might
a “pretty how town” look like, maybe a “how town”
is a jumping, happening kind of town, or . . . ?
Is it nonsense, or is it an alternate understanding?
That’s a question always worth wondering about.