Pine—the tree, that is—grows from a root that means to swell, from which we also get the word fat, and by extension Eire and the Pierian springs, for their fertility. But the pine in to pine for or to pine away stems from a root to payfor or atone which gives us penalty and punish and pain. Somehow two thoughts, on different sides of a shearing fault of language, have slid together and stuck, for our lifetimes, anyway, at the sound pine.
It’s not so common, in this practical century, for lovers to pine away, and as our climate warms, pines are retreating higher, but late as it is, anyone sleepless will hear the sound of the wind thinning through pines as pained. Maybe at first they were a little strange with each other, but it’s natural, now, that pine and pine are pine. Just as, when two who met on a trail one morning are still talking at sunset, something other than matching their strides is keeping them together.
"'The Dictionary of Indo-European Roots,' only 150 pages, shows how language might exfoliate from a few thousand words to the million of English. For example, the root wer-3, meaning turn or bend, becomes wrench, wrap, wrist, wrestle, worm, wring, wrinkle. And more metaphorically: wrath, worry, wrong. I hoped to find a link between the verb 'pine' and the noun. But no: I had to write one."
October 5th at 7pm, during Fall for the Book, we will feature a reading by four of our Editorial Board members, Peter Streckfus, Vivek Narayanan, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Sandra Lim.
"'Huia' is the opening poem from Wow, the latest UK publication collection by the New Zealand poet Bill Manhire. I hadn’t expected to be echoing the collection’s title quite so early in my reading, but the poem insisted. It was a 'wow' of grief and shock, however, as well as admiration."
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“For me, Virgil’s Aeneid is partly about continuity and repetition, a setting out over and over again. Likewise, David Ferry’s deep intertextual approach to writing—especially in Bewilderment, which includes his translations of Virgil, Catullus, and others, alongside his original poems—is also about continuity and iteration."
