Sublime

words are actions. They punch, tear, hurt, harm, soothe, amuse, educate, illuminate. They express ideas and feelings, and they make people feel better, and they move them to tears, and they enrage them, and they define them. We are all made of nouns, live by verbs, enlarge and entertain ourselves with adjectives and adverbs.

A sentence is more than its meaning. It is a line of words where logic and lyric meet – a piece of both sense and sound, even if that sound is heard only in the head. Things often thought to be peculiar to poetry – metre, rhythm, music – are there in prose as well, or should be.

WORDS MAKE WORLDS Our entire world is made with words.

“Everybody who speaks English decides together what’s a word and what’s not a word. Every language is just a group of people who are trying to understand each other...