English Flavors

            I love to lick English the way I licked the hard
round licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me for six
good conduct points on Sundays after mass.

            Love it when ‘plethora’, ‘indolence’, ‘damask,’
or my new word: ‘lasciviousness,’ stain my tongue,
thicken my saliva, sweet as those sticks—black

           and slick with every lick it took to make daggers
out of them:  sticky spikes I brandished straight up
to the ebony crucifix in the dorm, with the pride

            of a child more often punished than praised.
‘Amuck,’ ‘awkward,’ or ‘knuckles,’ have jaw-
breaker flavors; there’s honey in ‘hunter’s moon,’

            hot pepper in ‘hunk,’ and ‘mellifluous’ has aromas
of almonds and milk.  Those tastes of recompense
still bittersweet today as I roll, bend and shape

            English in my mouth, repeating its syllables
like acts of contrition, then sticking out my new tongue—
flavored and sharp—to the ambiguities of meaning.

                                                Laure-Anne Bosselaar
                                                The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

This poem has always inspired me with its sensuousness, but this time rereading it, I’m struck with a minor revelation. I’ve always thought that the sensuousness of language had to do with its music—the exquisite patterns of sound that reach our ears, shaping our emotions in subtle but powerful ways. What I’ve never been fully conscious of (even as I’ve enjoyed it fully!) is the sensuous movement of mouth and tongue.

Sounds exist not just at the point of reception but the point of creation. Language begins as a physical act. What the poem above celebrates is the pleasure of giving shape to sounds with our mouths and, in the moment before release, holding them there. We sense this pleasure even if we are just listening to the poem or reading it silently. We don’t have to literally speak it, just as we don’t have to literally plunge into a cold vat of water to feel somewhere inside of us the sensation of cold.

Still, reading the poem aloud does heighten the pleasure. I love to read aloud in general and, as Laure-Anne Bosselaar says, “roll, bend and shape” language in my mouth. When I speak the line 

            ‘mellifluous’ has aromas of almonds and milk

which has an m in every other word, I feel my lips meet and then seal to create a continuity of sound—mmmm—causing the sensation to linger on my lips and bringing to mind all the times I have ever savored something.

The deliberate repetition of vowels and consonants (known as alliteration, assonance and consonance) has powerful musical effects, even more so because we get to feel the resonance physically, in the flesh. Unlike most other musical instruments, the voice is one we all have learned to use so when we hear or read a word, we immediately know, whether consciously or unconsciously, what it feels like to give it voice. When the sweet flavors of words are heightened, we are tempted to take them not just into our ears but into our mouths, causing the music to resonate within us that much more fully. 

Perhaps because English is not her first language, and not even her second or third, Bosselaar is very aware of its flavors. Every one of her poems is a rich feast of sound, inspiring us as writers to revel in our own writing, tasting as we go.