Tag: word

As brash as it may be to say, the words spoken by spoken word poets have been known to paint the most detailed murals across the inner dome of countless heads. As defined by Glenn North (2008) for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, "Spoken word poetry is poetry that is written on a page but performed for an audience. Because it is performed, this poetry tends to demonstrate a heavy use of rhythm, improvisation, free association, rhyme, rich poetic phrases, word play and slang. It is more aggressive and 'in your face' than more traditional forms of poetry".

Say it out loud. It's a delight. Just look how happy Keri Russell is with that dog. I bet its name is "Felicity," and she named it that just because of how wonderful it is to say the word, and how she missed out on getting to say it all the time because that was her character's name, and people rarely refer to themselves in third person. (I'm sorry. I'll try and keep the Keri Russell '90s TV show references to a minimum...)* That light "l" sound in the middle (which is a liquid consonant known as an alveolar lateral approximant) just creates a feeling of fun. Say "la la la la" over and over again, with the tip of your tongue tapping that ridge behind your upper teeth. That's just fun. That's what this word creates. It's also very light and pretty-sounding. It's sort of the word version of Keri Russell's delicately-featured face. It is full of everything that is pleasing without being too much or too overwhelming. To me, when consonants are spaced out with vowels one right after the other, those vowel spaces create an openness that is comfortable and pleasant to speak and hear. Fe-li-ci-ty. This vowel spacing is especially fun in words with four or more syllables. It's all the fun of a big long word without getting bogged down by a change in rhythm or tripping over consonants.