Category Archives: pathopoeia

Pathopoeia

Posted on May 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

My dog was dead. My wife was dead. They were run over by a train while they were walking on the tracks. My sadness was gigantic like a monument to my grief. They were my two best friends, in addition to my spaced-out friend Mack who was still alive.

No more decent meals. No more making the bed squeak. No more roll over and fetch. No more swimming in the pond. No more watching TV. No more wearing her bathrobe on Sundays and playing corn hole in the driveway.

It was over. It was all over, like the end of a game of checkers, or the end of a rope. I was crying. I was blowing my nose. I was punching the wall. I was heartbroken, bereft, lonely, and lost.

What would I do now? I had to have a woman in my life. I couldn’t live without female companionship. I was 35 and I still had a long way to go. There was a widow, Mrs. Angle, who lived down the street. She was 72, but she was convenient. Three houses down! She had beautiful blue hair that matched her eyes. She had a small hump on her back that was hardly noticeable. She had all of her teeth and had a beautiful smile. I was going to give it a shot.

I put on my black muscle man t-shirt showing off the tattoo of a coiled snake on my left arm that said “Don’t Thread on Me.” It was supposed to say “Don’t Tread on Me,” but the tattoo guy had screwed up. I put on my khaki cargo shorts. Finally, I put on my Birkenstocks. I trimmed my beard and sprayed on two squirts of my “Time Passages Cologne” that my dead wife had given to me for Christmas.

I headed down the street to Mrs. Angle’s. It took me five minutes to get there. I rang the doorbell. The door opened and there was a beautiful young woman standing there! Mrs. Angle introduced me to her granddaughter. She was 25 and had come to live with her. Her parents had recently died in a car crash—going over a cliff and burning to death. She still hadn’t recovered from the tragedy. In a way we were in the same boat.

Mrs. Angle asked me what I wanted. I asked if I could borrow a mixing spoon. I told her I was making pancakes and freezing them. She looked at me funny, but she loaned me the spoon. I asked her granddaughter if she wanted to help me. Her name was Tammy, and she said she’d help me.

When we got to my house, I told her I changed my mind about the pancakes. We watched an old film noir classic “Double Indemnity” about murdering a person for an insurance payout. Tammy snuggled up by me and put her head on my shoulder. My grief melted away. The movie gave us a great idea.

Mrs. Angle had a $100,000 accidental death insurance policy. Tammy was the sole beneficiary. We decided to push Mrs. Angle out of the upstairs bathroom window. Mrs. Angle was bending over looking at her bird feeder out the open bathroom window. Tammy walked up behind and lifted up her legs and shoved her out window. She went straight down and landed on her head, breaking her neck and dying.

We were rich!

Tammy moved in and we got married. Tammy’s pregnant. We never made the pancakes.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on September 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I worked hard on my garden from the first hint of spring, I raked, and hoed and pitchforked. I hauled in sacks of manure. I prepared the ground. Our lives were dreary. As a cashier at Mr. Preshet’s Kamra-Mart, I hardly made enough money to support my family. Every once-n-awhile I would buy a fresh carrot for Little Ralph. Although he had a mustache, he was only two years old. I loved sitting and watching him gnaw on his carrot like he was a little bunny rabbit. My wife Nutsy can’t get a job because of chronic body odor—CBO. She contacted it when she started jogging. The exercise triggered her sweat glands to overreact. She can’t use deodorants because of the overreactive glands’ intolerance to the deodorant’s chemical ingredients. So, without her working, we can’t afford to put fresh vegetables (or frozen!) into our shopping cart. It’s down to the garden.

I went to Lowe’s and bought some seed packets—acorn and yellow squash, watermelon, radishes, carrots, peppers, okra, and corn, and some tomato plants. Tomatoes were one of Little Ralph’s favorites; right up there with carrots. He would twirl the ends of his mustache, and then plunge his little fingers into the tomato’s thin red skin.

The next day we raked again, and then planted everything. It didn’t take long for everything to start sprouting. It was beautiful. Soon there were ripening tomatoes, squash blossoms, and lots of little leaves from the other vegetables. We were going to have fresh vegetables! Little Ralph twirled his mustache and clapped his hands. This was his ultimate expression of happiness. We were fans of Salvatore Dali and would watch newsreels of him. Little Ralph would watch too. Sometimes Dali would twirl his mustache, and that’s where we think Little Ralph got his mustache-twirling from, but maybe not. So, anyway, we couldn’t wait, se we picked a green tomato and sliced it, breaded it, and fried it. It so good, it even made Nutsy happy and smell a little better too. We all went to bed.

The next morning he was on his fourth cup of coffee and third jelly donut when he heard a weird sound in the back yard—a combination of grunting and scratching. He looked out the kitchen window and there was line of about 30 groundhogs mowing down the garden. They’d already eaten half of it. He grabbed the kitchen mop and ran outside to beat them to death. They weren’t having it. Before he could land a blow, they swarmed him.

He called for Nutsy, but by the time she got there, they were gone, and her husband lay bleeding on the ground. Little Ralph was crying in the kitchen window. Nutsy called 911, next she set up a “Go Fund Me” site! She’d been waiting for an opportunity like this—she was going to go for $1,000,000.

Everything went well. No fatalities, and $1,000,000 raised. But, in the hustle bustle of it all, Little Ralph didn’t get his revered carrot. He ventured out the front door and was run over and killed by a Good Humor ice cream truck driving through the neighborhood ringing its bells.

Little Ralphie’s little headstone has a carrot engraved on it with a quote from Bugs Bunny: “What’s up doc?” Poor Little Ralph.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on February 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I was 84 years old when my hip stopped working, I contracted chronic double vision, started stumbling when I walked, a rash on my butt and lost my hearing aids. It was like my being was waiting for the right time to betray me. What else could happen? Later that day, a giant boil erupted on the back of my neck. The first order of business was the hip. But first, I went to my church. I figured it might be a good idea to ask for forgiveness for whatever sins brought the onslaught a maladies, and losing my hearing aids. The church was vacant, so I had the altar all to myself. I hadn’t been to church since 1970 when Donovan did a benefit concert there to aid the development of the “electrical banana” and used churches as venues around the US.

So, I took a swig from the bottle of cheap wine that was sitting there in a brown paper bag, got down on my knees and started pleading with God to restore my health: “I know I haven’t taken good care of myself, but at least I never took heroin or smoked or caught an STD. NOW, I’m only 84 and I’m falling apart. Please fix me. I am leaving $20 on the altar. I know you always need money. I will go home and wait for the miracles to begin.”

I took an Uber home and waited. Suddenly, I saw my hearing aids on top of the microwave. Then, I realized that’s where I left them. No miracles yet. No miracles at all. I was mad. I called the hospital to schedule my hip replacement surgery. They told me there was a one year wait. Now I was really mad. I decided to tell off God: “You are total bullshit. In fact, maybe you don’t exist. Maybe you’re a fairy tale like “Peter Pan’ or ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ I am going to write another story: ‘The Man That God Didn’t Listen To.’” I finished my diatribe and headed to the kitchen—limping along—to get a beer.

My phone rang. It was the hospital. A person had cancelled their surgery, and the hospital had an opening they could offer me. The surgery would be in a week. I went back to the church and gave thanks and gave God another $20. I talked nicely to God. The boil and the butt rash went away. I am patiently waiting for my vision to be restored along with my gait. Maybe next week.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on June 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I had lost my dog Pogo. I never should’ve let him out when they were picking up the garbage in front of my house. There was something about garbage that set Pogo off. I figured I could just follow the garbage truck and I’d find him, nose to the ground and barking his signature “boo-woo-woo” bark. I caught up with the garbage truck. Pogo wasn’t on the trail and he was nowhere to be found following the garbage truck.

I panicked. There was a good chance that Pogo had jumped up into the garbage truck’s hopper, been raked in, and compacted. It would be a fitting death for Pogo—assimilated to the garbage he so dearly loved: to become one with a half-eaten tuna casserole, left-over meatballs, an open jar of mayonnaise, coagulated gravy, rice and whatever else a garbage bag would hold: a garbage bag torn open and garbage strewn all over the back porch. I would get so mad at him. I would lock him in basement. I would consider having him put to sleep. But, I couldn’t do it. When he was a puppy, we fed him table scraps, and he developed an affection for them that was greater than his affection for us—he was addicted to tables scraps and we didn’t intervene. We just yelled at him and locked him in the basement. He would whine and I would yell “Shaddup mutt!” Now, he was likely dead in the back of a garbage truck.

The garbage man told me he’d be emptying the truck at the landfill at 4.30. He told me I was welcome to come and watch and see if my dog “fell out.” I was there when they started dumping. After about 20 minutes, Pogo came sliding out. He had a t-bone steak bone wedged in his mouth. I walked over to him to wrap him in the blanket I’d brought to bring him home in the trunk of my car and bury him somewhere in the back yard. In a way I was relieved—a major pain in the ass removed from my life: I tried to fight the feeling of relief, but I couldn’t. When I saw he was breathing, I cursed my luck. But I had no choice. He was my dog.

After thousands of dollars in vet bills, Pogo is 100%—100% pain in the ass as he’s always been, and he’s developed a new habit: dragging his butt across the living room carpet. We understand it’s worms and we’re taking him to the Vet to get a diagnosis and medication. This is life with our dog Pogo. I kick myself every day for not letting him die in the landfill.

I’ve built him a run in the back yard so we don’t have to let him into the house. As we anticipate his death from old age in a couple of years, we use words like “liberated” or “set free.”

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. Available on Kindle too.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on October 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

There’s nothing like a picture of a kid on crutches to get them to stuff money in the donation jar! And the bigger the jar the better! You can fit $300 in one of these giant pickle jars. You gotta’ give your fund a name. “Timmy” is a really good name for the kid on the jar. It reminds the rubes of the kid on “Lassie” who should’ve been in a wheelchair. You can try “Timmy’s Legs,” but I’ve found “Timmy’s Withered Legs” or “Cripple Timmy” or “Poor Little Timmy” work much better to rake in the bucks. Make sure to stand by the jar looking bereft and making eye contact to pull people in. Even though Timmy is fake, and the picture is photoshopped, it is important to have a story to tearfully tell, in case somebody ask what’s wrong with him.

You can make up a fake medical condition like “Leggonomia,” or “Rigatony’s Disease,” or “Spindle Legs.” This will help confirm the rube’s confidence in what you’re pushing. But probably, the story is the clincher. Try this: “I love my little boy Timmy with all my heart, but his legs bring me great sadness. We would go for walks in the park and he started falling down. We loved family square dance night on Sundays at church and he started falling down. Then, he started falling down just walking across the living room. [start crying here] We took Timmy to the doctor, he ran tests and determined Timmy has Leggonomia, an incurable disease of the legs that leaves him only 2 more years to live. We hugged and cried when the doctor told us that. Now, we are raising money to pay for Timmy’s end of life care, preceded by a trip to Kew Garden in England. Timmy loves flowers and his kitty cat Blinker too. He loves me and his mom too. I read him his favorite bedtime story every night: “The Little Engine that Could.” He thinks he’s that little engine, but I know he isn’t [cry again].

The story’s a little long, but it usually pulls a fiver for the jar, and that’s what we’re looking for: a fiver for the jar. I ran the Timmy scam for ten years after I graduated from high school. All my friends went off to college and became brokers, and lawyers, government employees, and politicians, and everything you can think of. I’ve stuck with Timmy all these years, but I’ve been running into past donors too frequently lately. When they say, “Hey, he’s supposed to be dead” I say “Yes you’re right, but with expensive therapy, combined with new drugs, Timmy’s condition is holding. He’s miserable, but he’s alive, thanks to people like you.” That usually nets a fiver, and that’s what we’re after.

When I learned you don’t need to be dying in order to appeal to peoples’ pity as an incentive to forking over a fiver, I decided to be the “victim” myself. I wracked my brain for a malady or a kind of personal tragedy requiring cash. First, I tried the stolen bird nest collection. People laughed at me. Then I tried the brain injury from the Iraq war gambit. That was a non-starter. The VA has great free healthcare, which I found out on my first try, when my mark threatened to call the police. I finally hit on incontinence. I would wet my pants and hold out a styrofoam cup. I would say “Please give what you can so I can get my bladder corrected.” Then, one late Autumn afternoon, a guy walked up to me and asked in a low growl, “How’s Timmy, scumbag?” I was ready for this: “Dead.” I said. “Bullshit! We both know there was no Timmy—you know it, and l know it: You’re full of shit!” Anticipating this, I had had a small brass urn engraved “Beloved Timmy, 2010-2020” and had taken a picture of it that I carried with me. “Here, look at this,” I said to the angry skeptic. He looked. His face softened and he pulled out a fiver and stuffed in my cup. “Good luck with your bladder,” he said as he walked away.

I’m getting tired of peeing my pants for a living. I was thinking of shitting my pants instead, but that’s too messy. Instead, I’m going to ghost-write sob stories for people in trouble who’re guilty, but don’t want to take the blame. I will be a fake defense attorney. Timmy will be my guiding light. Poor Timmy.

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. Available on Kindle too.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on March 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Pathopoeia

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I have a field. It has rich soils and rocky soils. It supports an abundance of wildflowers, mice, yellow and black striped Garden Snakes, bees, butterflies, ants and even a box turtle hunting for worms and crickets and other insects. For some reason I named him Lolly. I pick him up every-once-in-awhile. Somebody had carved “2000” on his shell. Cruel, but he had survived and flourished—he was 20 years old, but his survival certainly did not indicate that turtle shell carving is harmless.

The field is verdant and thick with life—plant, animal, insect. Autumn creeps in and then winter drops like a brick. Relentless cold, wind and snow. It’s early March and my back porch bird seed feeder and suet feeder are swamped, but there’s no fighting—just light pushing.

Its getting ‘warmer’ and the snow is melting, revealing bare patches of ground were the tall grass is matted down and buried treasures are revealed—things that blew into the field and have been buried all winter—a birthday balloon, a nondescript cardboard box, a gallon milk jug, a piece of aluminum siding and a small black thing. I get my binoculars and focus in. The small black thing is Lolly, laying on his back, dead. Poor little Lolly. The next morning, I look out the window and he’s gone. I suspect the local fox carried him off to help him get through the last few weeks of winter (along with other things).

Lolly’s disappearance should’ve affected me more. But he was dead and the fox was alive. If you’re going to love nature you have to accept how it balances out. I will miss Lolly in the field this summer, but I will take joy in the fox pups if their mother brings them to visit.

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. Available on Kindle for

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Pathopoeia

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Comments Off on Pathopoeia

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

He was born in 1946–at the end of WWII. He grew up in the 1950s—he volunteered to take the experimental polio vaccine, he watched Howdy Doody and Rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and played first base in Little League. He barely graduated from high school in 1966. He joined the Army and went to Vietnam. After that, he went to Woodstock. He bought a Triumph Thunderbolt and wandered around America on two wheels. He took a lot of acid, and learned how to do leatherwork, ending up in Monterey, CA, working in a small leather shop overlooking the Bay. One day, he decided to go to college on the GI Bill. He started out at a community college where they had open admissions. He got an Associate’s Degree and applied to the UC system, and was admitted to UC Santa Barbara. He graduated with a Masters and then went on to get a PhD from the University of Washington. He was a professor for many years. After 2 failed marriages, he met his current wife and they have a beautiful daughter. Their lives overflowed with love.

In every direction I look, I see tearful people, people remembering the goodness of this man and feeling the bonds of friendship that tied their lives, but no more. Now, there are memories—ephemeral traces and visions of what no longer exists, but affects us all as if he was seated there among you.

Goodbye my friend—my truest friend. Goodbye forever.

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. Available on Kindle for $5.99.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on December 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc

I am crying softly standing in this sea of graves. Stones all the same size. All the same height. All the same shape. Plots, all the same length and width. All showing the military’s obsession with order, and uniformity, but more importantly, showing equality–the joining, the training, the fighting, the dying. Maybe a stone’s inscription will mark some difference, but from here there is a display of patriotic unity, and equality of duty capturing the essence of service to flag and country.

At this point in the Republic’s history our highest ranking officer, our Commander in Chief does not seem to understand what makes the tears well up in our eyes–he pardons war criminals, he abandons our Kurdish allies, and he makes deals with other countries purely for personal gain. I think about his moral failures and incompetence and my tears dry, and my eyes coldly project my desire that this man–this fake Commander–this corrupt President–‘don’ an orange jumpsuit and join the ranks of criminals, keeping company among his fellow pimples on America’s ass.

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. Available on Kindle for $5.99.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on June 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc

My heart aches alternately with more pain and less pain, but never no pain. This is what it means to have a broken heart. I should be past this now, enjoying my retirement, my children and grandchildren. Yet my heart aches. I am old, too old for the pain. I do not know what to do about the endless pain, but you can pray for me–pray for the end of my pain, still living, and possibly enjoying life with its ups and downs. In the meantime, I will quietly suffer; old and presently broken.

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.

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Pathopoeia

Posted on April 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc

I closed my eyes, but the darkness made me more aware of the smell–unblended, sharply distinct smells squeezing through the sticky blood oozing from my nose–organic, inorganic: chalky dust from powdered plaster, rubber, blood (theirs), offal (theirs), burnt plastic, piss (my own), and through the ringing in my ears: unstoppable shrieks, droning groans: the sort of uncontrollable keening whining sound brain-injured victims make as they hover on the edge of comatose, and the tearful, angry, fearful, pain wracked, sorrowful, terrified yelling: “Help me” and “fucking hell,” “god damn it,” “my baby,””Jesus Christ,””shit,””fuck,” “I can’t see” and more.

Tractor trailer on its side–smoking. At least eight cars, and pickups and a FEDEX truck smoking and burning, leaking oil and gasoline, slickening and shining the pavement with rainbow pollutants. Among the dead, one teen-aged kid still clutches a blue and white can of America’s cheapest beer brand–the torn case crumpled behind her; cardboard soaking up her blood, cans strewn for fifty yards. Her legs are severed from her torso, below what used to be her hips. And she’s not the only one mutilated beyond belief, but there are others dead from crushed chests and skulls, others sitting sobbing bleeding grieving, others sitting cracked, fractured and broken, others are milling about. Still others, who escaped injury, trying to help what might be the handful of helpable victims: coats become blankets, blankets become shawls, flares are lit and cast their emergency-red glow and shadows of the fallen, the standing, the sitting, the kneeling awash in tangled metal, tires, mirrors, glass and chrome, scattered on the cold hard asphalt.

Broken car horns blare in competition with far off sirens singing “we are on are on our way.” “We are on are on our way.” “We are on are on our way.”

. . .

And the happy little nineteen-year-old student sits at the lunch table, staring at the old professor as he takes a sip from the third glass of  wine he’s had in the past 2.5 hours. She weighs 99 pounds; he weighs 265. She’s about 5.5 feet tall; he is 6 feet 3 inches. He has a beard. She has a smooth freckled face.

As it happens every once in awhile the old professor’s head has come alive with clogged-up Vietnam memory lanes, veins, and arteries. God only knows what triggers it, but there he is, fighting for his sanity while the happy little nineteen-year-old and the other five students chomp away on whatever they want! The old professor is generous. He thinks, “We could all be dead.” And then his stomach jumps and the happy little nineteen-year-old laughs and looks up at him from behind her fork. He fakes a smile. He wants to go to bed.  He wants to watch television. He wants to be asleep. He wants to be somewhere else, living in somebody else’s head. Sometimes he just wants to be dead.

“Time to go.” “Finish up,” I say. “Big day tomorrow.”

I drive them back to the hotel.

The next day, at lunch, the happy little nineteen-year-old tells me she feared for her life “last night” when I drove them all back to the hotel after “drinking.”

I am horrified. I am stung. I am worried. I say, “After all I’ve been through, do you think I would ever put you or any other student in harm’s way?” She says, “You are not allowed to drink,  and especially, drink and drive. I will not tell the Dean if you promise not to tell anybody we had this conversation.”

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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Pathopoeia

Posted on March 18, 2014 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

Being careful not to slip and fall down on what’s left of my neighbor next door, I continue my walk and follow my thoughts about death, my career, my car, last summer’s vacation, my flat screen TV, and my mother, daughter, and wife who ran beneath the tracer fire last night as it stitched up the sky with its thread of red, brighter than the dark puddle of blood collecting in the gutter and reflecting my dread.

I turn. I howl. I vomit.

My family is dead.

You call it war. I call it endless sorrow and pain. You call it just. I call it criminally insane.

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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Pathopoeia

Posted on March 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

“I am worn out, hungry, homeless, cold, and sick. I need help. Can I stay in this shelter tonight? Can I have some hot soup? Can I see a doctor?”  I heard this last night, and I hear some version of it nearly every night, at the homeless shelter where I work. I wanted to answer “Yes” to all the questions, but I couldn’t, and it broke my heart.

We can provide shelter.  We can provide meals, but we can’t provide any kind of medical assistance. When will I be able to answer “Yes, yes, yes” to those three basic life-sustaining questions? Shelter? Food? Medicine?

Well, now it’s your turn to answer: Will you volunteer? Will you be on call? Will you answer “Yes” when a homeless person asks “Can I see a doctor?” Will you help? What is your answer? Is it “Yes”?

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 Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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