Authors Ackerman and West talk about words at play

Ithaca writers Paul West and Diane Ackerman give the final lecture in the Summer Sessions series July 29 in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall. "All language is poetry. Each word is a small story," Ackerman said. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Justine Dougherty

Cornell held the last of its free summer lectures in Call Auditorium in Kennedy Hall July 29 when authors Diane Ackerman and Paul West presented "Words at Play: How Words Change and Change Us."

"All language is poetry," began Ackerman. "Each word is a small story, thick with its meaning, but we ignore the picturesque origins of words when we utter them. When we stand by our scruples, we don't think of our feet. But the word comes from the Latin "scruples," a tiny stone which was the smallest unit of weight. Thus a scrupulous person is so sensitive he's irritated by the smallest stone."

When an audience member asked how to overcome writer's block, West advised, "You can be irresponsible. Don't take yourself so seriously. Be playful. It lubricates you and enables an untapped dimension to break through to you."

"After all," added Ackerman, "play is related to the word risk." West and Ackerman took risks themselves by making quip after quip, causing ripples of laughter in the audience.

"Most of all," said Ackerman, "a poem tells us about our need to make treaties. How to glorify what's not glorious, how to bankrupt what's not. Poetry secretes life and freezes it; it's an act of distillation, yet it can also telescope time. We read poems because they are eloquent and persuasive forms of reasoning."

Both West and Ackerman spoke of writing as being essential to people because it provides emotional staples like the element of wonder. "Poetry," Ackerman said, "is my form of celebration and prayer. My way of inquiring about the world. I use words as an instrument to unearth shards of truth."

That truth, according to Ackerman, seems to be about our yearning to be relocated, the human desire to experience vicariously the soul-searching of poets, who pay exhausting attention to their senses so they can clarify the human condition.

"People like poetry," mused Ackerman, "because it shows people human truths that they may have already known but had forgotten because it wasn't yet in memorable language."

West explained that the word "escape" has a Latin derivation that originally meant to take off your clothing or cape. The word "fiction," he went on, is linked to the idea of touch.

Following the lecture, one audience member asked how one keeps on writing. "Invent your confidence," answered West.

"Become more interested in your work than yourself," advised Ackerman. "Fall in love with what you're creating."

Ackerman is the author of books of poetry and nonfiction, including the best-selling Natural History of the Senses, and a lecturer in the Cornell English Department. West, a former Guggenheim Fellowship winner, has written more than two dozen books of fiction and nonfiction. Both live in Ithaca.