Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics Across North America

from Universal Grammar

266 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century from Universal Grammar Parsing—the exercise of telling the parts of speech of each word in a sentence (Latin, pars, a part) The—distinguishing adjective, limiting the noun, cell. smallest—adjective of quantity, superlative degree, qualifying the noun, cell (unsuccessfully). cell—common noun, neuter gender, singular number, third person , nominative case governing the intransitive verb, remembers. (Long-term memory improves cell growth in nerve cells.) remembers—regular verb, transitive, active voice, indicative mood, present tense, singular number, third person agreeing with its nominative, cell which remembers and so re-members. O—sound of exclamation as in O God! Made by rounding the lips; first syllable of word name of African goddess of the river— O/shun. M. NourbeSe Philip | 267 Man Man is The tall man is The tall, blond man is The tall, blond, blue-eyed man is The tall, blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned man is many factors affect and determine the order of words in a spoken sentence: the state of mind of the speaker; the gender of the speaker; his or her intentions ; the context of the speech; the impression the speaker wishes to make; the balance of power between speaker and listener and, not least of all, the constraints of universal grammar The tall, blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned man is shooting the smallest cell remembers a sound (sliding two semitones to return home) a secret order among syllables Leg/ba O/shun Shan/go heart races blood pounds remembers speech 268 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century fragments—common noun,neuter gender,plural number,third person object of verb remembers. Re-membered fragments become whole. tremble—regular verb, intransitive, used as a noun, lacking all attri butes of the noun but movement. Only verbs have movement. ex—prefixsignifyinginEnglishandLatin‘out’or‘forth’asinexodus— the departure of the Israelites from the black land, Egypt; ‘to remove’, ‘expel’ or ‘drive out’ as in exorcize by use of a holy name like Legba, Oshun or Shango. man—common noun, male gender, singular number, third person, nominative case governing the verb, is. And woman. again—adverb used incorrectly as a noun modifying the transitive verb, forget, used incorrectly as a noun. M. NourbeSe Philip | 269 fragments brief as Sappho’s tremble of tongue on the brink of ex/ (when the passage of sound is completely (blocked a consonant is called) plosive tongue on the brink of ex/ (prefix—occurring only before vowels) odus orcize on the brink of ex/ (to strip or peel off (the skin) 1547) coriate The tall, blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned man is shooting tongue trembles on the again and again of forget the theory of universal grammar suggests the way we learn language is innate—that the conscious mind is not as responsible as we might believe in this process. our choices of grammatical possibilities and expressions are,in fact,severely limited; it isthesevery limitations that ensure we learn language easily and naturally. 270 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century Parsing—the exercise of dis-membering language into fragmentary cells that forget to re-member. raped—regular, active, used transitively the again and again against women participled into the passive voice as in, ‘to get raped’; past present future—tense(d) against the singular or plural number of the unnamed subject, man M. NourbeSe Philip | 271 when the smallest cell remembers— how do you how can you when the smallest cell remembers lose a language O homem alto, louro de olhos azuis esta a disparar El blanco, rubio, alto de ojos azules está disparando De lange, blanke, blonde man, met der blauwe ogen, is aan het schieten Le grand homme blanc et blond aux yeux bleus tire sur Der grosser weisse mann, blonde mit bleuen augen hat geschossen The tall, blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned man is shooting an elephant a native a wild animal a Black a woman a child somewhere Slip mouth over the syllable; moisten with tongue the word. Suck Slide Play Caress Blow—Love it, but if the word gags, does not nourish, bite it off—at its source— Spit it out Start again From Mother’s Recipes on How to Make a Language Yours or How Not to Get Raped. ...