"The difference between the right word and the nearly right word," Twain wrote, "is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." We all have the same words from which to pick, but across the American centuries, a tiny number have selected the right ones.

    Stephen Dunn offers lightning in his poem, "Named":

   "He'd spent his life trying to control the names/ people gave him;/ oh the unfair and the accurate equally hurt." And later, "A man who was a sweetheart/ and a son-of-a-bitch/ was also more or less every name/he'd ever been called,…"

   And this thunderbolt, "…when you die, he thought,/ that's when it happens,/ you're collected forever into a few small words."

   We may rue that no Twain or Dunn will write our ode. But I hope my preacher reads a little Twain and these lines from Dunn, "But never to have been outrageous or exquisite,/ no grand mistake/ so utterly yours it causes whispers/ in the peripheries of your presence – that was/ his fear."

   The word for anyone describing me "never outrageous" is "Liar."

   Dunn's choice for himself? "'Reckless"; he wouldn't object to such a name/ if it came from the right voice with the right/ amount of reverence./ Someone nearby, of course, certain to add, "fool.'"

   If someone describes me as "Driven," and someone else adds "fool" that's fine. Just so long as they say it reverently…

-Erie Chapman

Author at Parthenon (Nashville)