A Question on O'Brien's Poem

[jerry]

Hello, again, friends of Dappled Things. I 'm happy to have received my issue of DT in the mail yesterday, and so far I've read the book reviews and a few poems. Joseph O'Brien's poem on page fifteen is notable. Not only is it filled with evocative imagery and a flowing sense of rhythm, O'Brien didn't seem afraid to use a dictionary and thesaurus. My favorite line is on page sixteen: "The corn shucks are pages turned; harvest, a cornered turned." Just beautiful.

Alas, to praise the poem isn't my reason here. I'm curious of what the title of the poem means. Based on the foreign words and the use of the word optative, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "relating to or denoting a mood of verbs in Greek and certain other languages, expressing a wish, equivalent in meaning to English let's or if only", I presume the title word is in Greek. What does it mean? Perhaps a wish or a longing?

[Bernardo]

Hi Jerry. Welcome to the forums! To partly answer your question, the title is indeed in Greek and can be transliterated as "Koine," which is a form of Greek (the form used in the New Testament). Here's a Wikipedia entry on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

Perhaps Mr. O'Brien himself can give you some more insight into his choice of a title, as he sometimes visits the forums.

[jerry]

Thanks, Bernardo. I'd very much like to hear it from Mr. O'Brien himself, if he's willing to divulge the information.

[job]

Jerry,

Sorry to take so long to respond.

Thank you for the kind words on my work. They are much appreciated.

The title, as Bernardo correctly noted, refers to the Koine or "common" Greek. It's signficance for the poem is drawn from the fact that even before Latin, the Koine was the common tongue of the Roman Empire - being the last vestiges of Alexander the Great's empire before that.

I suppose in writing this poem to my daughter, the title sort of came last - but it seemed the perfect emblem for a newborn - coming into this world without a native tongue of her own and eventually going to adopt the "common" natural language of living - a sort of substratum of all languages.

Hope this helps!

JOB