The other reason for my subject here is that a few days after the attack on "foreburden," I saw an Internet announcement about a discussion group concerned with neologisms, as they are also called, and thought it worth publicizing. Miekal And, who runs the group, inaugurated it with a post listing some fifty neologies created by Michael Helsem, a mad neologist since the eighties or earlier. Two of these neologies, with their definitions, are "yenen - consumer goods related to an addiction" and "hellp - a store exclusively for yenen." Another I quite like is "dredreamam," which, for me, is a pwoermd (i.e., one-word poem, in the lexicon of G. Huth)--though Helsem defines it as nothing more than "an allnight insomniac."

And has been a neology-nut as long as Helsem. In 1985 he began collecting Helsem's and others' coinages for his Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms, which is now also on the Internet. In his introduction to the site, And says he is "particularly interested in invented words which represent concepts or objects that didn't previously exist." He sees neologizing as "a chance for artists to alter the future history of culture by 'breaking the code' & making a parallel history."

Among the many enjoyable specimens of neologization I turned up during a quick browse of the site's A and B sections are And's "abrabro" ("pertaining to but not including pertinence"), Samantha Lowry's "aggrieviations" ("nihilist organizations or doctrines"), Scott Noegel's "agication" (a cross between agitation and education), and Eric Hiltner's "bleer" ("obnoxious or overused stare"). And's dictionary also has a number of my own coinages, starting with "aesthcipient," my word for "one who experiences an artwork," which I'm still trying to improve on (because it's too hard to pronounce).

I'm not sure whether "foreburden" is yet in And's dictionary. It's a word I've used quite a bit for critiquing poems. It indeed almost means "interpretation" but an "interpretation" would include a poem's foreburden plus subjectively found meanings (such as its political meaning), and "undermeanings" (another coinage of mine, although not likely original, which means exactly what it sez it does). Nor is the foreburden of a poem its "meaning," because that would be an interpretation (i.e., more than what is explicitly there). There is also the problem that some poems--many of the best, in fact--do not have what most people would regard as a meaning. Pound's famous "In a Station of the Metro," for instance, depicts rather than states.

Many meanings can be mined from it, but its foreburden is simply, "the way certain members of a group of people emerging from a subway look." What I mean by foreburden is probably close to a summary, but a summary is external to, not part of, a poem--and I, for one, feel easier speaking of a poem's foreburden than of its "summarizable content," or whatever.

Another possible synonym for "foreburden," a "paraphrase," would be more detailed than a foreburden (or summary). Like a summary, too, it would be external to the poem it had to do with. An "explication" would have the same problem, as well as include implicit meanings. In short, "foreburden" can do what no other word can; I therefore proclaim it legitimate. It is also effective, in my view, because it is reasonably pronounceable, and consists of words or word-parts that suggest its meaning.

It won't surprise anyone who knows me that I've worked out a taxonomy of neologies. I divide them into four (so far not well- named) kinds: (1) nulleologies, or nonsense words; (2) malneologies, or neologies unneeded because one or more adequate words meaning what they are intended to mean already exist; (3) play-neologies, or coinages created for pleasure more than utility (e.g., entertaining nonce words like Helsem's "yenen" and Robert Greene's rude description of Shakespeare as a "Shake-scene," and aesthetically significant pwoermds like Aram Saroyan's "lighght" and Huth's "myrrhmyrrh"); (4) tool-neologies, or utilitarian neologies.

I subdivide the latter into two classes, beta and alpha. Beta tool-neologies allow the expression of needed meanings, but do so discretely; alpha tool-neologies allow the expression of needed meanings--with reference to an intelligent taxonomical system; that is, alpha tool-neologies express both a meaning and its relation to a system, which beta tool-neologies do not. An example would be my "juxtaphor," which I define as "an implicit metaphor consisting of two (or more) images, ideas or the like, that are not explicitly equated with each other but juxtaposed to each other in such a way as clearly to suggest a metaphorical relationship. This occurs most often in visual poetry, but Basho's haiku, "on a withered branch/ a crow has settled/ autumn nightfall," provides a nice purely textual example. Because I term all forms of linguistic equation or near-equation of words such as metaphors and similes "equaphors," "juxtaphors" refers both to its sibling, "metaphors," and to its taxonomic class, "equaphors," while also expressing its specific meaning.

Conservatives would no doubt criticize "juxtaphor" on the grounds that "implicit metaphor" would do as well. And what are my "equaphors" but figures of speech? But a Major Neologistic Rule of mine is that a single noun is preferable to the combination of an (often-used) adjective with an (often-used) noun because a single noun (1) will prevent the slack use that can corrupt meaning--e.g., the slide of "visual art" to "art," which can be ambiguous; and (2) can be made adjectival much more smoothly than an adjective/noun combination can--e.g., "illumagistic," from my neology for visual art, "illumagery," versus "visual-artistic." That one can express just about anything with some combination of words, to put it another way, does not mean neologization is of little or no value. The point is not just to supply meanings unexpressed, but meanings not yet concentratedly expressed.

With that, I'd better end this column-become-lecture before it runs away with me entirously.