Arkansas produced another wordsmith to the world in 1949, C. D. Wright.  But she was more than a wordsmith, she wrote poetry and became very successful in the literary world.  She loved words, as do I, and one of her poems is prefaced with the simple prefatory title, “I Love Words.” And please note the very bizarre title of this book of poetry  inclosed in parenthesis at the end.

I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing  unimpeded utterances. I love that the Argentine gaucho has over 200 words for the coloration of horses and the Sami language of Scandinavia has over a thousand words for reindeer based on age, sex, and appearance, e.g. a “busat” has big balls or only one big ball. More than the pristine, I’ll love the filthy ones for their descriptive talent as well as transgressive nature. I love the dirty ones more than the minced, in that I respect extravagant expression more than reserved. I admire reserve, especially when taken to an nth. I love the particular expressions of particular occupations. The substrate of those activities. The nomenclatures within nomenclatures.  I am of the unaccredited school that believes animals did not exist until Adam assigned them names. My relationship to the word is anything but scientific; it is a matter of faith on my part, that the word endows material substance, by setting the thing named apart from all else. Horse, then, unhorses what is not horse.  (C.D. Wright, “The poet, The Lion, Talking pictures, El Farolito, A wedding in St. Roch, The big box store, The warp in the mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire and all.)