Address of Poetry, MORE ON WORDS - Sally Eslinger's Blog

JAddress of Poetry/MORE W O R D S    (c) sally Young eslinger 2021

warning!  I am about to ramble!  This conglomeration of thoughts did not have a predatory outline to put it all in nest order.  It will come out  in flashes of thought, hoping to communicate and to inspire you to branches of thought and response you will want to share,  some will, I warn, be polically incorrect, but stands I stick to anyway, maybe because I am kinda old and date from opinions and thought pre-political correctness.
FIRST***** I was writing 49 yrs ago about growing up with diabetes. I resented being called a “diabetic,” because, after all, people didn’t say “politic” or “”canceric.”  There are other “-ic” tagging as for asthma and paralysis.
     THIS MATTERS, because when -“ic” is added the disease or condition”becomes the indents of the person, INSTEAD of saying, “person WITH diabetes” or “paralyzedperson.”  You see it goes from inclusion in the noun to an adjective.  As an adjective there is left room for the whole of the person to exist outside the condition.  
NEXT *****Who dreamed up calling a woman a “poetESS”?  Is POET a masculine word?  I didn’t know English had decided to follow the French & some others to assign gender to words.
     Likewise, saying, “congressman” is long enough without saying, “congresswoman.”  We don’t say, “senatress!”  
    What of female doctors? Or janitors, or male nurses. Mi would wish for consistency without baggage!

THEN, the Bible & literature in general...  personally, I have no problem with terming God “he” throughout.  There are people who make a big deal about calling God “her, she” BUT I notice the same people do not insist on calling Satan “she”!
      To me, the “he” used everywhere in the Bible and unless specified by character designation p, in literature and generally....became kind of GENERIC NEUTRAL, like the word “they”...which is assumed to be inclusive over exclusive.
    It was surely discriminating to the she’s of the world to always read of he’s but  as I said my mind included female in the mix.
     I also want to get a bit into this: at my mother’s unknowing dare, I set out at age ten to LEARN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WELL ENOUGH TO LOVE IT.  I also developed myself in the Classic tradition, with that love, teaching myself, hopefully, to aim to Elegant, Concise, Purposeful writing...and in Poetry, to aim for the boundaries and peaks of meaning by determined word choices, often leading language as close into the ineffable as possible in certain themes...not unlike the aAha! Moments in haiku...QAha because that gasp is of a knowing BEYOND words.
So, then, next we find inspiration hands us words we pen...interesting & often with the automatic/transcribing part of ourselves in the midst of the creating process.  But then, comes the editing, where we EXAMINE what has been first penned.  Not a bad time to haul out the thesaurus & dictionary.  And here, the poet in us links with the writer in us to edit, to REALIZE (make real) what has been set down...which involves WORDS, MEANINGS, INTENTIONS, DEFINING FEELINGS, RE-SEARCHING THE MEMORY, GAUGUING COMMUNICATION WITH THE READERS/AUDIENCE of what’s been written...
   I hope I’ve said some worthwhile things about which you may have some thoughts???
.
Would love some thoughts to further my education!  Stay well, friends!