Editorial August 20, 1990 Issue

Finding just the right words

Michael D. Rissler

Words are amazing things. They can bring peace when they're formed wisely in response to injustice. Or, they can cause conflict when hurled in rage. Sometimes we struggle to find the right words to say what we think. It's as the Philadelphia people-poet Horace Williams says in one of what he calls his "po-ems":

There's a lotta times you see things you wanna
say and you can't say them.
Then you feel as if you sing 'em in a poetic
way, a musical way, whatever...
You can present it to whomever you want to hear it. Quoted in The Story of English (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books-Viking, 1986), p. 227.