Tag: accents

Words have accents, some subtle, some severe.
The urban banter of a rough-cut brogue.
The soft rounded lilt that lovers revere.
Words are responsive to fashion and vogue.
They’re tandem partners in a common phrase,
They’re crude expletives in a colourful verse,
They’re gushing gaffs in superlative praise.
They can mumble, grumble; be short and terse.
Words can shatter dreams, mend a broken heart,
Words have expression, and so resemble
the whispering wind and the dashing dart,
the babbling brook and the leaves atremble
. Words have accents, some are rich and refined,
. others more guttural, milled in a grind.

© Tim Grace, 26 December 2012

To the reader: For such little things words can pack a powerful punch. The expletive works well alone; but on the whole words are social creatures. In pairs they hyphenate easily; in threes and fours they craft a competent phrase; beyond that their assemblage constitutes a sentence. In the world of words context is everything, for without association words are reduced to meaningless sounds; mere babble vibrating through space.

To the poet: In poetry, the word is a versatile instrument; adaptable and flexible. Adaptive in a syntactic sense, it transitions from active to descriptive modes with ease. As a flexible element, the word’s semantic nuances are powerful attachments to emotional strings. Between the right and wrong choice of word there’s a world of difference. A bit like chemistry … where a combination of elements can be volatile; evaporative and explosive.