Zombie nouns kill readers

 

 

Fall in love with nouns, adjectives and verbs.

But steer clear of ‘nominalizations‘.

They are the words ending with -ism, -tion, -ity confuse the reader. It impedes clear communication. Yeah if you wanna be a verbose, go ahead. You wanna confound someone’s thinking. Sure take a dig at using the zombie nouns.
What can be said in simple terms becomes difficult to understand when you overload your sentences with too many ‘zombie nouns’.

Save that effort for bureaucrats, lawyers and technical writers.

Use nominalizations  when you want to explain a concept or as a keyword. For instance, assume you have to define ‘epistemology’ or explaining what is syllogism in arguments.

Be a writer with purposeful talk.

Never ever think of yourself as a noun. You are a verb as Stephen Fry says. You’re an active being. You imprison yourself if you see ‘self’ as a noun.

‘Emotions recollected in tranquility’

An overflow of powerful feelings.. well that’s how poetry is defined. Right now, I am in a multiple state of mind. I don’t know how to exactly say how I am feeling. I am kind of apathetic to life to be honest.
Apathy doesn’t mean indifference to me. It is when you can coexist with more than one frame of mind and yet not be attached to any of them. Let me explain.. ahem..
I am neither sad nor happy. I am happy at the same time scared of losing things precious to me. I know its confusing so in other words let me tell you I’m ambivalent and fickle now.
So I started reading a poem to soothe my sense of self.

‘Unlearn the constellation to see stars’ a phrase which tells you to actually see things for that they are in simplicity than going into their structure. If you wanna see beauty in nature or your life, just forget what you have acquired from your experiences, treat every situation in life as something new. Even if you make mistakes, it would be a new lesson. If you keep carrying over the past lessons, even though its advisable to do so many a time, you become reluctant to take in life with a fresh breath.The same old stinking breath stops you from living.

“We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. By redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness.”

I just love these lines in the poem ‘Tear it down’. Guess who wrote it ? You may have never heard of this person still isn’t it worth knowing ? I felt he is an overlooked poet as I didn’t read his works when I was pursuing my BA in English literature.
There is this poet called Jack Gilbert. I read about him in a book named Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

She said she isn’t related to him (just coz of same surname) yet he is a memorable poet. Not all have heard about him as he never wanted fame, he just loved writing poetry from an early age.
‘Refusing heaven’ a book of poetry by Gilbert has been described by Dan Albergotti as “poems about love, loss, and grief that defy all expectations of sentimentality.

 

 

Jack Gilbert says in ‘A Brief for the Defense’ Sorrow everywhere, slaughter everywhere depicting a society surrounded by grim and abuse. He mentions that there is someplace where babies are starving even if you aren’t a witness to it. Just because you live in a world where starvation doesn’t exist, it all the more means that there is definitely some other place unknown to you where starvation forms the crux of life.
“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.” 

The world has been compared to a blasting furnace which doesn’t care what is on it as whomsoever is victim to the furnace is gonna get charred to ashes. Never take note od what is bad in the world rather rise above the sordid things in life. Death has been seen like an engine run by divine power and when it mows you over, just take it as if atleast there was some dramatic demise intended for you.

 

 

 

Gilbert compares the presence of a woman’s being to Latin as it’s the source of many derived English words and her physical body to the clear language of English which is easy to understand unlike its origin that holds a lot of ‘immensities’.
Now who writes and thinks in such a way !! Its just totally a different analogy that I read in a long time. Never struck me. Guys, go ahead and read Jack Gilbert’s poems and you would love them for their profundity and ability to explain deep human emotions in simple contemporary mundane way. He describes intimacy as the great portals of knowing each other being “closed forever”. What a wonderful definition and an intense explanation !