Adjectives

Good god I feel seen when reading Anne Carson’s writing on adjectives in the introduction to Autobiography of Red. It just becomes immediately clear that adjectives were the entirety of my interest in poetry, and that's why I failed at it. And why I leapt to abstract painting, which I see now is also all adjectives. Nothing surprises like adjectives, layered and unneeding the structure of a sentence to deliver their power, just as abstraction unneeds a figure. Unattached to rhythm. Unattached to form. A story unto itself, tethering associations onto its one. “The latches of being.” (AC)

The story is the association. The world is created in the joining. The seasonings are the adjectives of the soup. The nouns are unstable. The adjectives alter their makeup. “Unattaching their epithet” (AC). The adjectives redefine the name.

I have never been able to tell a story. I’m just not that interested in hitting the defined marks required, though, like everyone, I ride along happily when being told a story. But I am always surprised by their unfolding—that gun! Again! Unexpected every time.

And I can’t figure rhythm either. Really. Every word can be pronounced so many ways—who says which syllable has the emphasis? Who says? The ground is not stable.

Adjectives are free to function how they please. The smallest story. Dismissing pronunciation. And still walloping. If I say, “She could not hear anything through her need,” you have the story already. Everything else is elaboration.