My two most recent posts focused on “a supernova of Baader Meinhof moments” I experienced recently when I stumbled upon a 2020 essay entitled “An Acrostic Window on Emily Dickinson’s ‘I dwell in Possibility’” by Julia Hejduk of Baylor University. You can read all about it HERE (part 1) and HERE (part 2).
In the first of the two posts, I also mentioned, “the article even included a separate, unrelated Baader Meinhof instance for me related to the word ‘quotidian’ – a comment made in response to Hejduk’s assertion, “Emily Dickinson is a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite.”
I added, “maybe I’ll explain that one in a post some day soon.”
Well, guess what?
No, you’ll get no “chicken butt” from me. Instead, my response to “guess what” is “that ‘someday soon’ is today!”
Here’s the story:
Many years ago, I was an administrator at my daughter’s high school, so there was no need for her to take the school bus, she just rode in with me.
When she was a junior, we’d drive to school with a box of SAT vocabulary cards in the car, and each day we’d pick two cards at random to discuss and incorporate the word into our morning conversation.
One day, I picked “quotidian,” and I remember saying something like, “I should probably put this one back. People just don’t use this word.” But I didn’t. We went ahead and discussed the word, and left it at that.
A couple of weeks later, we were on a trip to New York City, and as we rode a subway station escalator to street level, a restaurant came into sight, and my daughter yelled “Hey, Dad – look there!”
In full view at the top of our ascent stood Le Pain Quotidien. We laughed and chalked up another Baader Meinhof moment.
Flash forward a couple of years. My daughter sat in her first composition class at college, and the Prof asked students to write papers of introduction. They were to discuss who they were, what made them tick, what were their interests, their hopes, their goals.
“And,” he said, “I want something fresh and original – nothing quotidian.”
He then looked smugly at the class and asked, “Does ANYONE know what that word means?”
LOL. My daughter was the only one with her hand up.
Sooo…”quotidian.” Did Dickinson ever use that word in any of her poems? Nope, although the word has been in use for centuries. The OED cites its earliest recorded us from before 1400.
In the first of the two posts, I also mentioned, “the article even included a separate, unrelated Baader Meinhof instance for me related to the word ‘quotidian’ – a comment made in response to Hejduk’s assertion, “Emily Dickinson is a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite.”
I added, “maybe I’ll explain that one in a post some day soon.”
Well, guess what?
No, you’ll get no “chicken butt” from me. Instead, my response to “guess what” is “that ‘someday soon’ is today!”
Here’s the story:
Many years ago, I was an administrator at my daughter’s high school, so there was no need for her to take the school bus, she just rode in with me.
When she was a junior, we’d drive to school with a box of SAT vocabulary cards in the car, and each day we’d pick two cards at random to discuss and incorporate the word into our morning conversation.
One day, I picked “quotidian,” and I remember saying something like, “I should probably put this one back. People just don’t use this word.” But I didn’t. We went ahead and discussed the word, and left it at that.
A couple of weeks later, we were on a trip to New York City, and as we rode a subway station escalator to street level, a restaurant came into sight, and my daughter yelled “Hey, Dad – look there!”
In full view at the top of our ascent stood Le Pain Quotidien. We laughed and chalked up another Baader Meinhof moment.
Flash forward a couple of years. My daughter sat in her first composition class at college, and the Prof asked students to write papers of introduction. They were to discuss who they were, what made them tick, what were their interests, their hopes, their goals.
“And,” he said, “I want something fresh and original – nothing quotidian.”
He then looked smugly at the class and asked, “Does ANYONE know what that word means?”
LOL. My daughter was the only one with her hand up.
Sooo…”quotidian.” Did Dickinson ever use that word in any of her poems? Nope, although the word has been in use for centuries. The OED cites its earliest recorded us from before 1400.
| The word initially referred to something that occurred daily, and today it is used to describe the ordinary or mundane aspects of routine life. Did Dickinson ever use the word “mundane” in any of her poems? Nope. However, she did use the word “daily” in 11 different poems, “ordinary” in 3 poems, and – while she never used the word “commonplace” – “common” was used in 24 different poems. Oh, and then there’s “routine,” a word that Dickinson used in just one poem, “To make Routine a Stimulus.” I’ll take a look at that poem tomorrow. |  |
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