Poem: "The Languagewoman"

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is today's second freebie, courtesy of new prompters.  It was inspired by wyld_dandelyon who mentioned one of my major influences, Suzette Haden Elgin.



The Languagewoman

I was still in college when we met,
working on a paper about
women's invented languages
in speculative fiction,

and there was Suzette Haden Elgin,
reading from an unpublished manuscript
of what would become Earthsong --
reading about the womanlanguage Láadan
and the different principles of translation.

I copied what I could recall
of the quotes I wanted for my work,
but she just chuckled and said,
"Oh here, write it down from the source."
So I did, handling the white paper
still warm from her hands,
weaving our work and our words together.

I went home with a copy of
A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan,
mulling over the new encodings,
ideas given names and frames and weight
all twining around each other
like a wreath of wild vine.

I've written in it,
little half-fluent whispers
flung upon the tides of time,
meaning curled within words,
phonemes sweet as sugarcane.
Touch.  Taste.  Take what you will.

This is the language that she left
for the world to listen to,
and some women did, and others disdained,
and that too is science.

There is the Science Fiction Poetry Association
with its Rhysling Award and its magazine Star*Line;
there is a collection of narrative science fiction poems
and another book on how to write such things,
and now I believe in wombats.

There are books upon books,
stories and instructions,
verbal self-defense
and advice for grandmothers,
a lifetime of insights distilled into
"Somebody should write a book about this,
well fine then, here it is."

Say that we are all storytellers,
but say too that there are masters,
linguists who reach above and beyond
what minstrels twiddle beside the fires.

Say that she is the many-times-great-granddaughter
of the woman who first cut words from the wind
with a tongue sharp as a flint flake and said,
"This is too is fire.  See how it burns!"

Say that she is the many-times-great-grandmother
of a girl who will learn the song of another earth
and pour forth language as limpid as alien rain and say,
"This too is ours.  Let there be peace between us."

Say all of that,
and say this truth too:
Suzette is the languagewoman.

She has touched my life,
leaving ripples in her wake,
and if you're reading this,
through me,
touched your life too.