Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0003
David-Antoine Williams
This chapter analyses the background data of various editions of the Oxford English Dictionary in order to give a quantitative profile of the contribution of English poetry to the composition of the OED. In so doing, I attempt to disentangle as best as possible the three forces that shaped this relationship: the development of the English language, English textual production and its culture(s), and the practice of Oxford’s lexicographers.
{"title":"Poetry in the Oxford English Dictionary: A Quantitative Profile","authors":"David-Antoine Williams","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyses the background data of various editions of the Oxford English Dictionary in order to give a quantitative profile of the contribution of English poetry to the composition of the OED. In so doing, I attempt to disentangle as best as possible the three forces that shaped this relationship: the development of the English language, English textual production and its culture(s), and the practice of Oxford’s lexicographers.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"168 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132017166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0012
G. Goodland
This chapter discusses the use of dictionaries and books of reference as a motif and a formal device in American poetry, particularly in the avant-garde stream, from Zukofsky to the Language poets, with special reference to the work of Ron Silliman and Tina Darragh. It distinguishes long poems in the Whitman tradition, which attempt to comprehend the world in the form of lists and extended descriptions, often using alphabetical orderings or other kinds of organisation similar to dictionaries, and smaller works of visual poetry able to subvert the notion of definition in a dictionary.
{"title":"Long Poems about Everything: Dictionary as Subject and Model for Poem, 1974–2016","authors":"G. Goodland","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the use of dictionaries and books of reference as a motif and a formal device in American poetry, particularly in the avant-garde stream, from Zukofsky to the Language poets, with special reference to the work of Ron Silliman and Tina Darragh. It distinguishes long poems in the Whitman tradition, which attempt to comprehend the world in the form of lists and extended descriptions, often using alphabetical orderings or other kinds of organisation similar to dictionaries, and smaller works of visual poetry able to subvert the notion of definition in a dictionary.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124939023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0002
C. Brewer
Many poets choose to use unusual as well as usual words, exploiting their different possible senses, registers, and sounds, together with their varying cultural, geographical, historical, and etymological associations. In consequence, both poets and other writers have regularly turned to dictionaries to provide raw material for their writing, not least to dictionaries with quotations from other writers. Dictionaries have returned the compliment: from Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) onwards, many monolingual dictionaries of English – and its constituent geographical varieties – have drawn upon the language of well-known writers to support their definitions of usage. This chapter discusses the mutual attraction between poets and dictionaries, and explores the linguistic issues that this relationship raises, particularly for the OED, with reference to writers and critics such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Hugh MacDiarmid, Seamus Heaney, and others.
{"title":"‘When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary’: Poets and Dictionaries, Dictionaries and Poets","authors":"C. Brewer","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Many poets choose to use unusual as well as usual words, exploiting their different possible senses, registers, and sounds, together with their varying cultural, geographical, historical, and etymological associations. In consequence, both poets and other writers have regularly turned to dictionaries to provide raw material for their writing, not least to dictionaries with quotations from other writers. Dictionaries have returned the compliment: from Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) onwards, many monolingual dictionaries of English – and its constituent geographical varieties – have drawn upon the language of well-known writers to support their definitions of usage. This chapter discusses the mutual attraction between poets and dictionaries, and explores the linguistic issues that this relationship raises, particularly for the OED, with reference to writers and critics such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Hugh MacDiarmid, Seamus Heaney, and others.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127603144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0005
Michael H. Whitworth
Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) used dictionaries in the composition of his ‘synthetic Scots’ and ‘synthetic English’ poetry in volumes such as Sangschaw (1925), Penny Wheep (1926), and Stony Limits and Other Poems (1934). The essay considers his attitudes to artificial languages and to dictionaries in relation to modernity, and his reading of dictionaries and word books against the grain of academicism. It particularly considers John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. It goes on to consider how, in his poetry, MacDiarmid places words and phrases that have been gleaned from dictionaries: his placing them in similes, and his leaving some of them unglossed and obscure. It concludes by considering the framing effects of alliteration, and the interplay of artifice and authenticity in MacDiarmid’s poetry.
{"title":"Jamieson, Jargons, Jangles, and Jokes: Hugh MacDiarmid and Dictionaries","authors":"Michael H. Whitworth","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) used dictionaries in the composition of his ‘synthetic Scots’ and ‘synthetic English’ poetry in volumes such as Sangschaw (1925), Penny Wheep (1926), and Stony Limits and Other Poems (1934). The essay considers his attitudes to artificial languages and to dictionaries in relation to modernity, and his reading of dictionaries and word books against the grain of academicism. It particularly considers John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. It goes on to consider how, in his poetry, MacDiarmid places words and phrases that have been gleaned from dictionaries: his placing them in similes, and his leaving some of them unglossed and obscure. It concludes by considering the framing effects of alliteration, and the interplay of artifice and authenticity in MacDiarmid’s poetry.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132935039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0008
Mia Gaudern
From the subtle and often ominous resonance of names in his earliest poems to the forensic investigations of Maggot (2010), Muldoon never allows etymology to be unequivocally relevant, or indeed irrelevant, to synchronic usage. This ambiguity is especially striking in his elegies, as it chimes with the classic dilemma of representing a loss for poetic gain. Through close readings of ‘Hedge School’, ‘Yarrow’, and ‘Cuthbert and the Otters’, this chapter examines the use of obsoleteness in Muldoon’s elegiac diction; words no longer current, but preserved in dictionaries, provide the poet with roundabout routes to a mitigated poetic grief. Whether evasive, provocative, and digressive, or, as in his elegy for Heaney, profoundly grounding, etymologies are an essential part of these poems’ struggle for closure.
{"title":"Etymology and Elegy: Paul Muldoon’s ‘Yarrow’ and ‘Cuthbert and the Otters’","authors":"Mia Gaudern","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"From the subtle and often ominous resonance of names in his earliest poems to the forensic investigations of Maggot (2010), Muldoon never allows etymology to be unequivocally relevant, or indeed irrelevant, to synchronic usage. This ambiguity is especially striking in his elegies, as it chimes with the classic dilemma of representing a loss for poetic gain. Through close readings of ‘Hedge School’, ‘Yarrow’, and ‘Cuthbert and the Otters’, this chapter examines the use of obsoleteness in Muldoon’s elegiac diction; words no longer current, but preserved in dictionaries, provide the poet with roundabout routes to a mitigated poetic grief. Whether evasive, provocative, and digressive, or, as in his elegy for Heaney, profoundly grounding, etymologies are an essential part of these poems’ struggle for closure.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115262989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0011
Kate Potts
Through close analysis of dictionary definition form in the poetry of Robert Pinsky, Mary Kinzie, and Solmaz Sharif, and with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination (1975), this chapter explores the ways in which the dictionary definition poem celebrates and also questions the dictionary’s authority through the dialogic juxtaposition of different forms, registers, and discourses. The analyses problematise binary distinctions between poem as sound-focused, subjective, and individually constructed, and dictionary definition as textual, objective, and communally constructed. Both the dictionary definition and the poem share an association with word as artefact, with cultural memory and history, preservation and loss. This chapter demonstrates how, by encouraging the reader to ‘dwell in possibility’, the dictionary definition poem offers a fertile space for the discussion and reconfiguration of cultural meaning.
{"title":"‘All Things are Words of Some Strange Tongue’: Dictionary Definition Form in Contemporary American Poetry","authors":"Kate Potts","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Through close analysis of dictionary definition form in the poetry of Robert Pinsky, Mary Kinzie, and Solmaz Sharif, and with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination (1975), this chapter explores the ways in which the dictionary definition poem celebrates and also questions the dictionary’s authority through the dialogic juxtaposition of different forms, registers, and discourses. The analyses problematise binary distinctions between poem as sound-focused, subjective, and individually constructed, and dictionary definition as textual, objective, and communally constructed. Both the dictionary definition and the poem share an association with word as artefact, with cultural memory and history, preservation and loss. This chapter demonstrates how, by encouraging the reader to ‘dwell in possibility’, the dictionary definition poem offers a fertile space for the discussion and reconfiguration of cultural meaning.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129371001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-30DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0009
T. Stubbs
1925 was an important year for the poet and editor Marianne Moore. First, she began assuming editorial responsibility for the American literary magazine The Dial, taking over from her predecessor Scofield Thayer. Second, she saw her collection Observations published, with the first edition selling out within a month. Moore’s interest in dictionaries at this time displays some intriguing overlaps between her critical and creative lives, still an underexplored area within Moore studies. Therefore, this chapter discusses Moore’s early reviews of a range of reference works, before turning its attention to Moore’s poems ‘Injudicious Gardening’ and ‘Marriage’, to demonstrate how Moore’s preoccupation with questions of definition becomes altogether more subversive, and revealing of her capricious attitude towards the notion of ‘definition’ itself.
{"title":"Briefer Mentions and Lyrical Lexicons: Marianne Moore’s Responses to Dictionaries in The Dial and Observations","authors":"T. Stubbs","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789620566.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"1925 was an important year for the poet and editor Marianne Moore. First, she began assuming editorial responsibility for the American literary magazine The Dial, taking over from her predecessor Scofield Thayer. Second, she saw her collection Observations published, with the first edition selling out within a month. Moore’s interest in dictionaries at this time displays some intriguing overlaps between her critical and creative lives, still an underexplored area within Moore studies. Therefore, this chapter discusses Moore’s early reviews of a range of reference works, before turning its attention to Moore’s poems ‘Injudicious Gardening’ and ‘Marriage’, to demonstrate how Moore’s preoccupation with questions of definition becomes altogether more subversive, and revealing of her capricious attitude towards the notion of ‘definition’ itself.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116085360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William Empson was ambivalent about etymology; ‘we would often like an influence from past uses to survive in a word’, he wrote in 1977, ‘when it plainly doesn’t’. But he had always been preoccupied with ‘how a structure of meaning comes to be built up in a word’; this is part of what Kitty Hauser identifies as an ‘archaeological imagination’, an important strand of thought about origins and histories running through English modernism, by means of which what people would like to survive could be mysteriously animated. Empson’s poems of 1936 cast alterations and retentions of verbal meaning – which arise out of human behaviour but seem also to possess a power of their own – as figures for other forces detected but not fathomed. Considering contemporary events and public speculations over their causes and consequences, they were written while Empson, researching The Structure of Complex Words (1951), was thinking closely about what and how dictionary entries can convey. Shaped by reading the OED at a particular point in its own history, and through a particular historical moment, they also read that moment through the dictionary, and are set in motion by his wary investigation of what you could call an etymological imagination.
{"title":"not even invented","authors":"D. Bowman","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx8b7h3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx8b7h3.10","url":null,"abstract":"William Empson was ambivalent about etymology; ‘we would often like an influence from past uses to survive in a word’, he wrote in 1977, ‘when it plainly doesn’t’. But he had always been preoccupied with ‘how a structure of meaning comes to be built up in a word’; this is part of what Kitty Hauser identifies as an ‘archaeological imagination’, an important strand of thought about origins and histories running through English modernism, by means of which what people would like to survive could be mysteriously animated. Empson’s poems of 1936 cast alterations and retentions of verbal meaning – which arise out of human behaviour but seem also to possess a power of their own – as figures for other forces detected but not fathomed. Considering contemporary events and public speculations over their causes and consequences, they were written while Empson, researching The Structure of Complex Words (1951), was thinking closely about what and how dictionary entries can convey. Shaped by reading the OED at a particular point in its own history, and through a particular historical moment, they also read that moment through the dictionary, and are set in motion by his wary investigation of what you could call an etymological imagination.","PeriodicalId":292869,"journal":{"name":"Poetry & the Dictionary","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123921834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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