(n.); cunning in words; skill in adorning speech; the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words; from late Latin and Greek, log (“speech, word”) and daidalos (“skillful, ingeniously formed)
Every society we’ve ever known has had poetry, and should the day come that poetry suddenly disappears in the morning, someone, somewhere, will reinvent it by evening.
—David Biespiel, from “Poems Hold the Mysteries of the Present, Dreams of the Future”
Spectacular, isn’t it? The way curious curlicues and lines on a page, assembled together in some mutually agreed upon arrangement, weave fantastic images and ideas, allowing us to extend our minds far beyond the limitations of physical time and space and to experience worlds otherwise unimaginable, inaccessible. We’re talking, of course, about the written word (and those particularly skilled in it). In celebration of language, we bring you Jonathan Russell Clark’s essay over at The Millions on the art of close writing. And for some irreverent fun, also check out this 2013 McSweeney’s piece waxing poetic about the much-abused comma.
