The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “language”

An Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them
An Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them

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The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult Question of How to Be Yourself
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult Question of How to Be Yourself

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A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith

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Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious
Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious

“Metaphor can create a merciful sense of distance from the cruel idea, or the unspeakable truth, and allow it to exist within us as a kind of poetic radiance, as a work of art.”

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Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing
Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing

“As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas… a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change.”

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Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024

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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name

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Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence
Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence

“The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language.”

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The Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated
The Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated

“A metaphor is language that simultaneously creates and solves its own riddle; within that minute explosion of mind is both expansion and release… It is how the mind instructs itself in a more complex seeing.”

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William Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind
William Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind

How the ability to call your idea “by various names, borrowed from various languages,” empowers you to conceive that idea “in a way precise, clear and unconfused.”

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