words

girn
v. - To show the teeth in rage, pain, disappointment, etc.; to snarl as a dog.--To show the teeth in laughing; to grin. Obs.

selving

from LXX

Difficult to end starting from here,
but I'll surprise us. Inurements
I'll allow, endurances I approve;
nothing of ours is irreducible
though passion of failed loves remains
in its own selving. So let us
presume to assume the hierarchies,
Goldengrove, even as these senses fall
and die in your yellow grass, your landscape
of deep disquiet, calm in its forms: the Orchards
of Syon, sway-backed with pear and apple,
the plum, in spring and autumn resplendent.
Syon! Syon! that which sustains us and is
not the politics of envy, nor solidarnosc,
a hard-won knowledge of what wears us down.

Geoffrey Hill, The Orchards of Syon

words

euodic
adj. - aromatic, fragrant

love declaimed

2. As Narrative (Novel, Passion), love is a story which is accomplished, in the sacred sense of the word: it is a program which must be completed. For me, on the contrary, this story has already taken place; for what is event is exclusively the delight of which I have been the object and whose aftereffects I repeat (and fail to achieve). Enamoration is a drama, if we restore to this word the archaic meaning Nietzsche gives it: "Ancient drama envisioned great declamatory scenes, which excluded action (action took place before or behind the stage)." Amorous seduction (a pure hypnotic moment) takes place before discourse and behind the proscenium of consciousness: the amorous "event" is of a hieratic order: it is my own local legend, my little sacred history that I declaim to myself, and this declamation of a fait accompli (frozen, embalmed, removed from any praxis) is the lover's discourse.

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

wiry

samuel beckett

words

systrophe
n. - Bio. The clumping together of chloroplasts in a cell when exposed to bright light.--Rhetoric. accumulated definitions of a single idea, often in a sequence without conjunctions ('asyndeton')

equipoise in the fervor

There is a modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body swoons,
it is because the heart knows its truth.
There is a directness and equipoise in the fervor,
just as the greatest turmoil has precision.
Like the discretion a tornado has when it tears
down building after building, house by house.
It is enough, Kafka said, that the arrow fit
exactly into the wound that it makes. I think
about my body in love as I look down on these
lavish apple trees and the workers moving
with skill from one to the next, singing.

Linda Gregg, "The Precision"

words

engine (n.)
ety. - < Anglo-Norman engine , enginne , engynne , ingein , Anglo-Norman and Old French engign , enging , Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French engin , engien (French engin) inborn talent, intelligence, or wit (12th cent. in Old French), tool, implement (12th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), ruse, deceit, expedient (1119), large machine or instrument used in warfare (1165), ingenuity, skill (late 12th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), magic power (late 12th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), instrument of torture (early 13th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), tackle (early 13th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), trap, snare used in hunting (13th cent.), (of a person) natural disposition (1496), piece of machinery by which a character (especially a god) could appear suspended above the stage (1565 in the passage translated in quot. 1579 at sense 7), penis (a1600) < classical Latin ingenium natural disposition, temperament, inherent quality or character, natural inclination or desire, mental powers, natural abilities, talent, intellect, mind, cleverness, skill, ingenuity, clever device, contrivance, in post-classical Latin also trick, craft, malice (late 2nd cent. in Tertullian), means (6th cent.), trap (6th cent.), instrument (11th cent.), siege-machine (frequently from 12th cent. in British and continental sources): see ingenium n. Compare Old Occitan engenh (also engen , ingein , engien), Spanish ingenio (1251 as engeño), Portuguese engenho (13th cent.), Italian ingegno (a1292). Compare gin n.1