Fabulous Faith, Bouncy Bianca, Joyful Julia

Today I met Bouncy Bianca, Erratic Eric, Joyful Julia, Merry Mei and a host of other people who’d just stepped out of a rather twee little storybook for children. We went around a circle in class, giving our names alliterative adjectives, and then valiantly tried to recite one another’s names.

Of course, we weren’t really remembering one another’s names. We were remembering caricatures of one another’s names; we were remembering violent juxtapositions of the prosaic and hyperbolic. There was humor and irony in how we fumbled for an alliterating adjective, before quickly declaring a completely uncharacteristic one. We got to see how a strong adjective overshadows its accompanying noun (“uh…sorry, Jubilant…what?”), how assonant words reinforce one another (everyone remembered Erratic Eric). When you bring words out of the confines of the page, the mechanisms of poetry become amplified. The addition of one word creates a subtle and profound significance. We became different persons for a few minutes of our lives.