I Give You a Word free essay sample

I grew up knowing that calligraphy is a sacred art. I knew that the Chinese love their words, their elegant black-inked characters sweeping across silken scrolls with swirling lines. My parents made sure I learned my Chinese poetry and proverbs, dignified little armies of words skinned to the bone but drenched in meaning until one could not add or remove a word without destroying the whole thing. My great uncle was a famous calligrapher from Taiwan. Long before I was born, he gave my father a scroll with the Chinese character â€Å"patience.† As he presented it, he said to my father, â€Å"I give you a word.† When I was young, my father told me this story to explain how that great word â€Å"patience,† with its black fins of ink on white paper trimmed with gold, ended up in his study. He explained how it serves as a constant reminder to control his temper with its imposing but calming presence. We will write a custom essay sample on I Give You a Word or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page As a child, I marveled at how grave and serious it all sounded to give people words. Years later, at a conference for high-school newspapers, I attended a session called â€Å"There’s a World in a Word.† As an activity, the speaker asked us to begin with a word, brainstorm words that we first thought of when we heard it, and continue until we had a web of words. We discussed the wealth of implications and possibilities that a single word can embody, almost as if there’s a world in a word. I returned from this conference thinking deeply about words. I thought about people like my great uncle giving others words and how the Chinese feel that a word is so valuable that you could even give it to someone. I started perceiving words as the Chinese perceive theirs: as little cosmos invested in a few marks on a page, meaningless until they are given meaning. Since then, whenever I have been struck with an incredible burst of inspiration and have sat down to feverishly channel the revelation into a poem, I find myself seeing those worlds in the words I am writing. I have come to think of my poetry as an attempt to give people words, to show and share with them the worlds I see.