I am reading Terrance Hayes' "Lighthead" right now and I love it.
The line I chose for the title particularly resonates with me because I am infamous for mispronouncing things. I actually convinced a coworker "affidavit" was pronounced "aff-ih-daahv-it" (as opposed to "aff-ih-dave-it") because I continually pronounced it the wrong way. I had no idea I was even wrong.
Too much timing reading books, not enough time talking in my youth, I like to joke.
And because I love it, I've put it up on Soundcloud as well.
Wow. I love this. Thank you for sharing. So many striking and beautiful lines. The line you picked gives a delightfully succinct rendering of the notion of language as the ordering/generative "intelligence" behind human development, sort of a "genetics via logos." Who was it said "Language speaks us?" I'm actually really curious. The never-wonder machine seems divided between Heidegger and Gadamer -- which is an awkward place to dangle. A poem about poems, about why we write, and one that doesn't get so lost in its own abstractions as to forget about beautiful and piercing details. My favorites: He says "discrete" and means the street just out of sight. Not what you see, but what you perceive: that's poetry. Not the noise, but its rhythm; an arrangement of derangements. and Thus, I am here where poets come to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice, something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables of debris. (best excuse for a drink I've heard in awhile). Thanks again!