Craft: Language into Language Demographics by Zyen Smoot

Zyen Mingo-Smoot is an African-American and Afro-Indigenous poet from Varnado, Louisiana. Her primary themes are tackled through the contemporary southern gothic where she gathers the 20th century genre to examine modern-day socialization, landscape, and culture of the Deep South.

Craft: Language into Language Demographics

Language into language: when the language is the story; when language weaves in everything or connects and webs the world and theme building of a novel, poem, or play whether through titles or figurative language. 

If the title of your novel, poem, or play is The Sun Never Fails then a reader may expect the author to provide language that centers on building the idea of the title. 

Going back to Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club essentially makes sense to develop the theme of “Joy” and “Community” and “Luck” in the story. If a character in a novel is described as being a rich young man whose ambitions outweigh his responsibilities, then the language must reflect the actions he takes, the dialogue he may use, or the figure of speech, such as similes and metaphors, that gives in depth understanding to his character. 

Toni Morrison tells you what is to happen in The Bluest Eye, therefore, the language used must build to the climax and ending of the story. Language into Language is when the language is the story. It is the moment the author introduces an idea, and, therefore, has to continue to build and web said idea into the development of the story. 

One of the many ways a writer may do this, is being intentional about the title of their work. Poems, for example, are usually very specific about a title. In fact, most poets understand that the language we use must be intentional considering most 20th and 21st century poetry is not the length of a novel. 

Every word and how we use them does essentially count. However, since poetry does not follow the typical plot map then the title of a piece matters to the entirety of what the poem is about or how the author is going to use language to build on the theme(s) of the poem via the title and vice versa since some people put the titles after finishing the piece. 

For example, Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” foreshadows or gives insight into what the poem is going to be about based on what is in the title. By the time we get to reading, the title serves as a reference to the developing themes of perseverance, anti-Blackness, erasure, and resistance in the poem: 

“You may write be down in history 

With your bitter, twisted lies

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise” (“Still I Rise” 1-4).

Some may argue the idea of when a piece is untitled or actually titled “untitled,” the former cannot serve as a conversation in this essay because the focus is how titles do serve a purpose to the art. For the latter, titling your work “untitled” is still building the momentum of what the work is going to be about. It will still be a reference point for the themes that are being developed. 

The late D’Angelou’s most famous song is titled “untitled.” Raphael Saadiq, one of D'Angelou's close musical artists, says the song was named such because “the tape [they were using to record] ran out” resulting in a cut off that ultimately became the end of the song (Saadiq). 

Although how the song ended was not intentional, the title was and it served as a reference to how the audience interpreted the lyrics where some have found the title and the lyrics to be attributed to the influence and homage of music, while others see it as a never ending feeling, whatever that feeling may be, hence, “how does it feel?” which later becomes a subtitle. 

As far as we are concerned, it can be either interpretation, but how we come to these conclusions has a lot to do with how the title serves the art, where an artist is bringing conversation or connecting to the audience which makes the specifics just as important as the nuance in its development of Language into Language.  

Additionally, similes and metaphors are typically used to “convey ideas in deceptively simple ways” by “providing [the] audience something concrete to connect more complex ideas, even if those ideas are initially unfamiliar" (Eliassen). What this means is that Language into Language also directly serves the purpose of grounding complex ideas into concrete understanding where a comparison solely makes sense to the message that writer wants to send to the reader. 

In the case of developing the themes of a story, similes and metaphors play a part in bridging the connection between the language and the message while also providing more insightful ways to look at certain aspects of life. Like a young Black girl desiring blue eyes. 

Activity: Think of a title—any title, even an old title. Use that title to leverage what you write about. Allow the title and the other elements of your writing to be in conversation with each other and, vice versa. If you find yourself changing your title based on what you have written, do another revision of your piece with the new title. See if you can find layers and connections between the message you want to send, and how your language is informing that via your title and the other elements of your piece. Let the language speak for itself (literally and figuratively). 

Here are a few sample titles if you need them:n“Where does the time go?”, “Adam and Eve”, “And I was still alive” , “I never died” , “Gators Skin” . “The Sun Never Dies” , “All of the flowers” , “My love…my life”, ”Untitled”.