For Frank in Philly.

“I’ve always been fond of lavender,” said Frank Wilson of Books Inq.  That was his nomination for the most beautiful word in the English language.  (Earlier nominations here.)

Others chimed in on my Facebook page:

Agustín Maes voted for murmur, also, florid.

Artur Sebastian Rosman was full of ideas:  noctilucent, donut, iris.  Donut? Doesn’t he mean doughnuts, at least?  (Artur, get something to eat.)  He also favored  “TSE words like chthonic.”  TSE is T.S. Eliot – of haruspicate fame (which always sounds like a man clearing his throat, not prophesying). “Filiation is also a lovely word,” Artur added.

“My favorite word of all time and by far the liveliest in any language is…. vivificantem.”  Well, as he noticed, that’s not really English; it’s Latin.  So it shouldn’t count.

Marianne Bacon quarreled with Deshoda, the blog that started the contest:  “I think that list on Deshoda (whatever that is) is a bit silly. How about Chestertonian words, or Jack Lewis words- like woodsmoke, or pipe, or fireplace, or snow, or Christmas, or pudding, or child. Or elf, or lamppost, or courage.”  But the contest isn’t for words with pleasant context or associations, but beautiful sounds.   “OK, inglenook.”  I thought, at first she meant the wine – but no, inglenook is “a chimney corner, is a small recess that adjoins a fireplace.”

Jim Erwin wrote: “prestidigitation and Terpsichore are good examples of fingerpoia and feetpoia.”  Wait a minute, he made those last two up.

Daniel Rifenburgh made half a nomination – Sussurus…

From Edward Haven yielded to my entreaties: “I’ve started to like Giraffe, but I have to agree nothing compares to authenticity.”  A son after my own heart.

What?

Erën Goknar is “SO glad you mentioned the much-maligned [Edgar Allan] Poe and his bells!”

Finally, Sarang in my comments section offered “a little stream-of-consciousness: myrtle [in my fancy a portmanteau of myrrh, squirt, and turtle], scavenger, flounder, interred, fever, recalcitrant, splay, stray, splatter, vespers, pageant, expunge, effulgent, excrescence, gun, cleave, hew.”

Jeff Sypeck favored shorter-is-better:

My first impulse is to go with big, fun-to-say words like tatterdemalion, but I don’t think many of our little Anglo-Saxon words get enough credit for euphony: Read. Comb. Sleep. Yore. Soft little words can be beautiful, too!

Postscript on 7/15: A few more suggestions –

Joe Loya: Efficacious; ventriloquy; or supple. I love the way they look, sound, and their flexibility in application.

Another one from Artur Sebastian Rosman: Reconciliation is overused and under-practiced, but what a beautiful word.

And a few late nominees from Patrick Kurp:  incarnadine, philtrum, wan, atrorubent, flange .

Obviously, I am an ailurophile

This one is too much fun to resist.

The Deshoda blog is asking for the 100 most beautiful words in the English language.

They’ve got some good ideas – it’s hard to beat tintinnabulation, for example, as Edgar Allen Poe knew when writing of

… the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Or sempiternal, or serendipity, or, for an ethnic note, how about Susquehanna? Am I just enamored of those scintillating sibilants? Perhaps.  Quintessential, then.

Onomatopoeia is too obvious, I think. So is mellifluous … which, really, is an example of onomatopoeia, isn’t it?

All the French words they’ve picked, like denouement. As Camila commented, are words like ratatouille really English words?

And here’s one I didn’t even know:  Petrichor – the smell of earth after rain.  How not to fall in love with that one?  Reader Ranjini commented it “has got me waiting for the day the rains come.”

Galleycat joined the fun, and made a simple nomination for the list: lovely.  This isn’t just one of your holiday games, admonishes Galleycat editor Jason Boog, “it is one of the most important questions an aspiring author can ask. All writers should love language and keep a long mental list of favorite words to use at important moments in your writing.” As if to underscore the point, the Galleycat editor also shows us to a site for a visual thesaurus.

Triumphant

Which brings to mind Nadia’s recommendation, Robert Herrick‘s liquefaction:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !

As a child, ripple was one of my favorites – and it made Deshoda‘s cut.  But my sister’s favorite didn’t:  voluptuous.  Well, you have to know my sister.

My daughter told me that, since girlhood, her favorite word was triumphant, because it reminded her of elephants.

But now that I’m older and wiser, I know I know the very best word of all: 

authenticity

Make your own nominations below. Or on my Facebook page. They’ll wind up here anyway.

Dave Lull sent me a link for another review of my book, from Gregory Wolfe‘s Image journal:  “This year is the centenary of the poet and Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz’s birth. As a writer he is universally celebrated, but his life and work exist on such an epic scale that many of us are intimidated by the idea of actually clambering up those heights. So the publication of An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz, edited by Cynthia L. Haven, is a welcome addition to the literature.”  The writer  concludes that although the book is not an introduction to the poet’s life and work, “it can be an excellent companion for the reader who decides to take the plunge and get to know a great man who lived through dark times and yet went on to become a witness to truth, goodness, and beauty.”

Covered with glory

Beneath the review I saw a familiar face:  San Francisco’s Agustín Maes was just named as one of two runners-up for the first-ever Paris Literary Prize, an international competition sponsored by legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company in collaboration with the de Groot Foundation. Winner Rosa Rankin-Gee took the 10,000-euro prize, and Adam Biles was the fellow runner-up. Their work was chosen from over 430 novellas submitted from 34 countries.  The contest highlights the novella as a literary form and is open to writers who have not yet finished a book.  The winners were announced on 16 June during an award event held at the Société des Gens de Lettres in Paris – so Agustín got a trip to Paris.

Erica Wagner, jury chair and literary editor of The Times (London), wrote:

“Along with my fellow judges, I was dead certain that the author of one of the runners- up, Newborn—about a naïve teenage girl forced to deal with an unwanted pregnancy— must be by a young woman. I mean, obviously, right? Nope. Its author turned out to be Agustin Maes, an American man… The kind of imagination evidenced by a story such as his is a reminder of what a magic trick really fine writing can be. It is the writer’s job wholly to inhabit the characters he or she invents: a rare gift that few authors truly possess.”

Congratulations, Agustín!

There'll be bird poop on his face within a week.

I don’t care for the likeness, but I do rather like the chutzpah of the sculptor, Georgy Frangulyan.  His proposed statue of Joseph Brodsky lost a contest in the Nobel poet’s native St. Petersburg, and earlier was the subject of frenzied internet opposition.  So he up and decided to put the statue up on his own dime (or ruble) … in Moscow.

“It is my own personal monument,” said Frangulyan. “I didn’t have a choice, as there was a crisis and all those who had promised money withdrew.”

Late for the train, John?

Frangulyan wouldn’t say exactly how much it cost, but priced it at a few million dollars.  Since the sculptor is fronting the money for the project out of his own pocket, without anyone buying the statue, I don’t know how he would assess its value.  Materials?  I doubt he had that kind of money to invest.  Labor?  He puts a high price on himself.  Usually, the value of artwork is determined by someone making a bid.  But if these are the new rules, this post is worth $50K, and I expect you all to start chucking money at me.

As for the locale, Moscow worthies decided to put it across from the U.S. Embassy:  “We looked for a place for a long time,” said Alexander Kuzmin, Moscow chief architect, in 2007. “We looked to see where the relatives of the poet lived. Then we asked ourselves a question: What most of all links Brodsky and Moscow? And we understood – the American embassy, from there he left the U.S.S.R.”

The Russia Beyond the Headlines article, here (with a hat tip to Dave Lull) is a masterpiece for what is left unsaid. The article states that “Brodsky actually left for Vienna, initially…”  Well, no, the government had a policy of shipping its unwanted Jews to Israel.  Vienna was merely the stopover where he bailed, with Russian scholar and friend Carl Proffer, and headed for the U.S. instead.  The article notes that he never visited his parents again after his exile.  Well, no, he didn’t.  Even though he petitioned repeatedly, with increasing desperation, to get them a visa.  He even wrote about it, bitterly.

Nearby are sculpted silhouettes of twelve people in two groups, but Brodsky is obeying a shopworn convention of the otherworldly poet, staring into the sky, abstracted, not watching to see if he is stepping into pigeon crap.

According to the article:

Frangulyan said it shows how a poet is alone but with a circle of followers. “Some people go through life like a shadow and some become individuals,” he said.

Well, okay.  Whatever.  But the look on his face is, well, a little disdainful.  Like he’s looking down his honker at everyone.

David Sanders suggested that he was on the lookout for overhead pigeons.  The first well-targeted pigeon bombing should dispel that one.  It’s likely to land on his prominent nose.  He won’t see coming: his eyes are closed, if you look closely at the face.

I have another explanation:  He’s finally back in the new Russia – but he is stubbornly refusing to look at it.

For purposes of comparison, here’s a statue of John Betjemin in the square where I lived briefly some years ago.  He also, is looking up – but looks rather confused, and lost in the St. Pancras/Kings Cross Station, and maybe late for a train.

Postcript on 7/10:  David Sanders, in his emailed Poetry News in Review, had this more sagacious comment, which humbled me mid-snark: “Maybe it’s time for a renaissance in publicly memorializing poets and writers through the strategic placement of their likenesses, if only in hopes that it will prolong the life of their words, raise their public profiles (so to speak), and give them equally footing with our other heroes. For some of us, these men and women are our heroes.”

All I have to do is move to Osaka.

This 557-square-foot “shelf-pod house” was designed for a young historian with a huge collection of books on Islamic history (please note carpet and painting).  The house  features floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelves – even above the bathtub and toilet.  It can support 10 tons of books, and withstand earthquakes.  All books, all the time.

According to the architect, Kazuya Morita:

Every element — from the stairs to the windows — were scaled to the individual shelf unit, “with the aim of achieving geometrical harmony which is comparable to Islamic architecture,” Morita’s website notes.

The shelving had to be strong enough to support the entire house. “This is an unusual structure. I never experienced this kind of architecture,” said Morita, who declined to disclose the cost to build the house.  …

Considered part of a new generation of architects, the 39-year-old Morita has wowed interior design and architecture critics with the Shelf-Pod and some other innovative and unique housing designs, including the “Pentagonal House.” He noted that the Shelf-Pod was one of his most ambitious and challenging projects.

He describes his work as a harmonious marriage of traditional and modern architecture, with sustainable materials and eco-friendly amenities.

And a few other traditional amenties, too.

Take that, Kindle!

(Furnish your shelf-pod house with book furnishings – here and here.)

Carter: It's not as easy as it looks. (Photo: L.A. Cicero)

Haiku has been ubiquitous as an art form for just about as long as I remember.  Partly, that’s because it’s generally supposed to be easy.  Pull together three lines in a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, then – bingo!

All you need to do is count and lineate.

There is, of course, more to it than that.  That’s why I found my conversation with Japanese scholar Steve Carter so refreshing. Haiku, as developed in the 12th century, was a communal art form, as rule-bound as chess.  The seasonal words and motifs, the grammatical turns, the topics for each verse in a long string of verses were carefully governed.  Moreover, the educated person was more or less expected to trippingly invent these on the spot, for the admiration (and evaluation) of the others.

Of course, the West had its own ideas – Carter said the form was adopted by the Beats, who saw it as a zen-like attempt to abandon the rules.

Want to get a feel for the olden days?  You might try next month’s “Head-to-Head Haiku Slam” at the National Poetry Slam in Boston, Aug. 9-13.  Here’s the description:  “Do you think you’ve mastered the art of concise poetry? This three-day event will determine who has the best seventeen syllable poetry in Cambridge. Whether you call it haiku or senryu, this slam has its own special rules and unique judging system. If you plan on competing, you’re going to need dozens and dozens of haiku ready, as this is one of the most popular events at nationals.”

Well, so much for on-the-spot invention.

A poem a day keeps the engineer at play

I’m told (though Steve couldn’t confirm) that the first newspapers in 19th century Japan even told the news using haiku, which the first verse, hokku, in a long string of verses called renga.  This didn’t show up in my research, either – but this did.  I learned the remarkable story of Google software engineer Freeman Ng and his website Haiku Diem.  Through his Haiku Diem Facebook page, Twitter feed, blog, and mailing list, he has over 4,000 readers, and it’s climbing:

July 9th will be the one year anniversary of Haiku Diem, a website that started as a simple writing exercise but which has grown into a high tech experiment in self-publishing and online community building.

“I began this on a lark,” says Ng. “I wondered how many consecutive days I could keep it up, and thought I might go a month at most. Two things have happened since then. First, the writing has become so ingrained into my daily life that I can’t imagine ever stopping. Second, the growth of my readership has made me rethink how I might be able to get published some day, and even to rethink what it means to be published in the first place.”

His remarks suggest that haiku is addictive, in a addition to being ubiquitous.  Thanks to his daily, online readership, he probably has more readers than almost any mainstream poet, which will stand him in good stead:  “Some day, I might have to self-publish them,” explains Ng, “and if that happens, it will be invaluable to have what is essentially a mailing list of thousands of people who love my writing to market them to.”

Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out Koko the Gorilla‘s haiku contest, in time for the primate’s 40th birthday.  To my best knowledge, it’s the first time a non-human has announced announced and judged a poetry contest.

As Terry Hummer said on his Facebook page: “I think gorillas should judge all poetry contests.”

My goodness.  I thought they did.