A Note About Neologism

Daniel A. Rabuzzi has had two novels, five short stories and twenty poems published. His most recent criticism can be found in the Los Angeles Review, Heavy Feather Review, Overheard, Hopscotch Translation, and New Letters (the current issue is paper only at this point); forthcoming in World Literature Today, Chicago Review of Books, and Ancillary Review of Books. He earned his PhD in European history. Tweets @TheChoirBoats

“In the choice of his words, too, the author of the projected poem must be delicate and cautious... you will express yourself eminently well, if a dexterous combination should give an air of novelty to a well-known word. If it happens to be necessary to explain some abstruse subjects by new invented terms; it will follow that you must frame words never heard of by the old-fashioned... It has been, and ever will be, allowable to coin a word...”

--- Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace), The Art of Poetry

“Liltlessness.” That's Kevin Young's coinage, a word he uses in the poem “Deep Song,” from his 2003 work, Jelly Roll {A Blues}. When I first read it in 2008, the word stopped my heart and then restarted it:

“Belief is what

buries us—that

& the belief in belief—

No longer

do I trust liltlessness

—leeward

is the world's

way—....”

First encountered, “liltlessness” teased a gap between the commonplace and the unknown. Young's language carried my eye effortlessly across the meter and the alliterations, while telegraphing (oh, giddily!) a sly break, a novelty partly hidden. That's how Young worries the line. He knows we know the constituent parts, such quotidian elements – “lilt,” “less,” “-ness”– and that we have expectations of each. They sit quietly, like the component parts of a clarinet resting in an instrument case of Young’s devising, until he as composer and performer, as Poet, unpacks and combines them, so they sing together as one. Initially, I glide over it, thinking I know this word, this “liltlessness,” complimenting Young on selecting precisely the right word for the needs of the poem, impressed with how well it flows with “belief,” “longer,” and “leeward,” how it augments the deeper purpose and impact of the collection. And then comes the drop, the ghost note: I don't know this word. Wait: does it even exist? But if it doesn't, then how could it not? And why not 'til now? Young has upped the game; the reader must attempt to match. I check the dictionaries: there's no “listless” or “liltlessness” to be found, just immanent meaning, waiting for Young to uncover and carry it to us; the state of being without, as the OED puts it, “the rhythmical cadence or ‘swing’ of a tune or of verse.” Something mechanical then, or desiccated, lifeless, randomly blown by the wind, not to be trusted, most definitely not a place to make a home, which wants to be leeward.

I have returned to this poem, and specifically to this word, many times over the years. I marvel each time at Young's ability not only to compress an entire history of meaning into three syllables and to position those syllables pinpoint *pow* within the pattern of the poem, but even more at his creating a word that flows organically from the language, that feels as if it must have been in the OED all along. Some may say, with no small justification, “well yes, but isn't that the poet's job, after all?” Indeed, but few poets working in English today engage in neologism – we appear to be as linguistically conservative as the Romans of Horace's day, and in need of his reassurances once again. (Andrew Gaylard, in the only large-scale recent study of poetic neologism that I can locate, suggests that current English-language poets are far less prolific at creating new words than our Elizabethan and Victorian predecessors). Instead, poets have by and large ceded the craft of neologism to marketers, to the military, to managers. Our current English has no end of neologisms as a result, but most are forced, contorted, sutured together to suit strictly utilitarian ends, not flowing limpidly from existing etymologies or semantics – dusty creatures who, alas, possess “liltlessness,” but little else. Welcome exceptions are the many words created by hip-hop artists (“hip hop” is itself a word on the Neologism Greatest Hits List); think “bling,” “beatboxing,” “turntabling,” “illin'.” And we still ponder what rock & roller Steve Miller meant with “the pompatus of love” in his 1973 hit “The Joker.” Another rich source of neologisms in poetry is sign language. (*)

Neologisms work formally by confounding our expectations. That is only the start. To succeed aesthetically, to really work their spell, they must force us to re-evaluate and adjust our expectations, but without arresting our eye, or stopping the flow of the poem. I see lots of words coined in commercial spaces that confound my expectations but that wholly fail to delight – instead they preen in their inelegance, stopping my eye cold, breaking whatever possible spell they might otherwise have cast. Young's “liltlessness,” however, fascinates thrice-over: first with its sleight of mind, whereby I read full charge ahead, thinking I know the word and finding it apposite; second with the realization that the meter's been dragged, a dub step dropped in there, morphemes rearranged like J Dilla chopping beats; third, with the appreciation for a subtle newness, something that honors the form by updating its features, something that propels the reader forward. Restraint coupled with surprise (James Longenbach identifies “restraint” and “surprise” as two of “the virtues to which the next poem might aspire”), the quiet flourish that lands us a quarter-measure ahead of the anticipated beat, leading to deeper understanding of what Young is about with Jelly Roll {A Blues}.

(*) Having no direct knowledge of any sign language, I rely here on Rachel Sutton-Spence's “An overview of sign language poetry.” For instance: “Sign languages differ from spoken languages in the amount of lexical creativity that occurs in everyday language. In the main, languages such as English are fairly stable, and creating a new word is notable. Sign languages, however, are much more productive in their vocabulary, and creating new signs is often a part of everyday signing.”