Paroemion (par-mi’-on): Alliteration taken to an extreme where nearly every word in a sentence begins with the same consonant. Sometimes, simply a synonym for alliteration or for homoeoprophoron [a stylistic vice].
“Seven skillets sat sizzling—searing scallops—suddenly started smoking, then flaming like volcanos on the Mexican desert.” The quote is from Bonomo Fluenzia’s collected works titled “Blades of Gas.” He was devoted to writing incoherent books and essays. He felt it was paramount to cast off the desire to make sense and the struggles it entails that undermines human happiness with the never-ending quest for meaning—a mental illness known as hermeneutiosis, where you spend all your waking hours tied up in acts of interpretation. Fluenzia advises that you just write whatever spews into consciousness, paying no mind to verbs and adjectives, and all the other parts of speech that block creative writing’s freely flowing river of words—making them into marshes infested with mosquitoes and leeches.
Fluenzia believes that speaking in tongues is the paramount literary achievement. It’s incoherence is complete—so complete that is taken as the voice of God. Sitting and listening, and knowing you’re not expected to understand it, is relaxing, and affords you a glimpse of what life will be like on the other side, and an incentive to be born again and join the sheep at the river flowing to Jordan or Jersey City, the exalted hub of wonder and joy. Wonder and joy. Cheaper than New York—affordable housing, good clubs.
All of the above is the gist of a lecture I’ve given over and over to great acclaim. I am a professor “Words” at Alexander the Great Community College in Vester, MA. I am paid by the state, so I don’t put much effort into my professional life. There are so many regulations that I’m untouchable. Once, I ran over a student in Parking Lot B. I nearly killed her, but students are not permitted in Parking Lot B. I got off for “failure to see something that was not supposed to be there.”
Anyway, I am marked as a literary traitor. Fluenzia stands in opposition to the hoax called creative writing. Aligning my interests with his put me beyond critical evaluation by peers. As Fluenzia wrote: “Once opened the can cannot top the gong of swinging life, mud, and mayonnaise.” We do not need to know what this means—interpretation’s “other” takes pride in the bliss of nonsense and the alphabet’s inevitable “Z.”
POSTSCRIPT
Professor Trapp was convicted of arson for trying to burn down “Alexander the Great Community College.” Not very creative, as was most of what he did, Trapp used gasoline in an empty Clamato bottle. He stole the gasoline from the groundskeeper’s storage shed. He threw the flaming bottle into a urinal in the faculty restroom. A colleague quickly flushed the urinal, extinguishing the flames, and a thwarting Trapp’s plan. Trapp was sentenced to five years in prison where he watches “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and has a reading club with fellow inmates. They’ve just finished “Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship.” Next, it is their goal to read the entire “Nancy Drew” series.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. Also available on Kindle for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 