… I may or may not have spent hours stumbling through literary lexicons in search of a name for this Substack. My mother once admitted she named me ‘Alicia’ because she never made it past the A’s in the Baby Name Book. Similarly, I stopped somewhere around C.
Technically, it belongs to poetry.
Catalectic:
i. (prosody) a line of verse that lacks a syllable in the last metrical foot
ii. incomplete; partial; not affecting the whole of a substance
I’m not a poet and won’t pretend to fully grasp catalexis. But I love the above definition as a kind of metaphor for both writing and the human experience. Aren’t we all lacking a syllable somewhere? There’s something beautiful, to me, in the idea that both people and lines of poetry might appear incomplete on the surface but still capture or convey a greater whole.
From a craft perspective, I’ve always believed what isn’t said is just as important as what is — more powerful, even, when said restraint destabilizes facile narratives or established rhythms.
(It also contains the word “cat,” which seems like a win on the internet.)
Subscribe to Catalectic
ii. incomplete; partial; not affecting the whole of a substance
You are to me a metaphor for the people I wish I knew and the stories I wish I lived. Stuck on my tongue like a poem after I stopped writing poems.
I love it! You taught me a new word and I like that said word can be used to describe the writing experience!