That word: Charles Wright limns a winner
- Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright concedes he may have been sub(limn)inally influenced by the Hook.Photo by Jen Fariello
Limn– that pretentious word that so troubled the Hook that we once asked each of our writers to use it. Now we see it used by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
"Snake Eyes," Charles Wright's poem in the February 17 & 24 issue of the esteemed New Yorker, begins like this: The afternoon clouds are like a Xerox of the morning clouds/An indecipherable transcript, ill-litanied, ill-limned.
Could the Hook's limn-riddled June 27, 2002, issue have influenced Wright?
"I must say I didn't see that issue," Wright responds.
Then where did he get the word? "It just sort of came to me in a dream," he says. "I've never used it before. I know because I looked it up."
Limn simply means "to describe," and unscientific research indicates that while limn has apparently never occurred in any human conversation, it has a devious tendency to infect artistic writing.
Many readers denounced the Hook's limn experiment. Lisa Pfaffinger called it an "inside joke," another threatened to tear us "limn from limn," and a group of waitresses from Miller's fretted that "rectum" might next appear in every piece. Someone even accused us of insider-trading in limn options. (Fortunately, our self-esteem rebounded with Catherine Potter's letter lauding the Hook as a "smart paper.")
So the Hook didn't influence Wright's poem? Wait– he's changing his mind.
"Let's say you did," he relents. "You can have it."
Nooooooooo.
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