Word: idiom
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...desolation which knows not its own emptiness, the psychology of inexpressible terrors and inexplicable sickness, or as the revenging husband Golaud says, "We cannot see the other side of fate nor the sins of our own." Maeterlinck portrays these largely lifeless souls consumed by irresistible fate with his personal idiom of bare symbolism and rhythm, taking us to the edge of enervation as we begin to feel our own strength and moral consciousness become fluid, then dissolute, and finally desiccated...
...more adamantly colloquial and hortative, as in Ginsberg's "Howl." But these distinctions tended to blur as the groups began influencing one another. Behind them, unifying them, were the established voices of Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, William Carlos Williams, and even old Walt Whitman, whose emotional, plain-speaking idiom came to be idolized by many of the new poets...
Berryman's new collection (Songs 78 to 385) completes the work started in 77 Dream Songs. As in the first volume, Henry figures as the central character; occasionally a friend, who is never named, addresses him as "Mr. Bones." The songs' idiom is always peculiarly American, peculiarly Berryman. It is a successful combination of colloquial dialects and a modern, jazzy, discordant line that continually startles...
...that will take over the center is a problem of definition. Wasps are not so easily characterized as other ethnic groups. The term itself can be merely descriptive or mildly offensive, depending on the user and the hearer; at any rate, it has become part of the American idiom. In one sense, it is redundant: since all Anglo-Saxons are white, the word could be Asp. Purists like to confine Wasps to descendants of the British Isles; less exacting analysts are willing to throw in Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans. At the narrowest, Wasps form a select band of well-heeled...
...precisely in everyday life by the conduct of persons who are not psychologically ill nor considered to be so." Life in mental hospitals-"storage dumps" is one of his kindlier descriptions-also has its rituals. The patient who throws feces at an attendant, Goffman argues, is using a ceremonial idiom "that is as exquisite in its way as a bow from the waist. Whether he knows it or not, the patient speaks the same ritual language as his captors; he merely says what they do not wish to hear...