[Newspoetry] The REAL origin of "Newspoetry"

[Donald L Emerick]

The question of definitiveness in the term "newspoetry" seems to come to
stake when a word meaning is not assigned.  As Carroll once noted, the
question of meaning would be, in the last analysis (or in the latest
analysis, though the two are not the same, for at least the latter is
expressly forwardly deployable, whereas it is dubious that any analysis is
ever last or is meant to last (unless it is demented or de-minted)): "Who's
will recognizes (or is recognized as, again an equivocation) what some term
means?"

It is possible that a word has
A.  no meanings
B.  one meaning
C.  some meanings
C.  most meanings
D.  all meanings

The problems in this SAT question are that it never says when any of these
theses are true or false because it refers to the possible.  I think that I
could always imagine some condition such that any thesis thus has no
absolute truth value, such as a meaning.

Could I imagine, though, that I could not imagine some condition on the
latter statement?  Could I absolutely relativize the authority of
relativitization, or is the authority of relativity so absolute that no one
may deny it?  (Physicists: please note, my use of the term relativity may
have nothing to do with any theories of the same that you have conspired to
name.)

Moreover, whatever the meaning of the word newspoetry may be, Sir William
does not raise the question of other meanings or of any meanings.

He simply asks after a simpler matter: regardless of its meaning, when did
the string "n-e-w-s-p-o-e-t-r-y" first appear, as such, to any conscious
mind?  When did it first appear in thinking?  When did it first appear in
speaking?  When did it first occur in writing?  When did it first occur in
the movies?  When did it first appear in a Presidential speech?  When did it
first appear in a Papal encyclical?  When did it first occur on Mars, or a
planet (if any) circling Sirius, and so on?  When did it first occur in a
foreign galaxy?  When did it first occur in a foreign universe?

Well, possible worlds are truly susceptible to a lot of firsts!

I suppose that I have thus suggested that thinking is the least (or most
minimal) grounds for an appearance -- a most anthro-centric point of view, I
must confess.  Moreover, I do not even explore the question that I beg
entirely:  what is a language, so that I would know whether "newspoetry" in
English was preceded by a cognate form in some other languages, such as
Yiddish or even in the "MotherTongue" Gibberish.  For then, I would have to
go through all of the writings, and sayings, back to the start of such
evidences of thinking -- and yet, I would also have to recognize that there
may possibly have been a time before writing, just as there may be a time
before saying -- if thinking is to be possible.

<<I wanted to ask after accidents as well.  Imagine some mytho-poetic
monster printing machine that begins spewing out all two letter
combinations, then moves on to print all three letter combinations, and so
on.  Well, then, I have to thank infinity (or some such condition of being)
for combinatorial explosion: to invent a new word, as an act that precedes
the activity of this monster wordsmith, I may begin with a wordstring longer
than the class of wordstrings that the monster is presently generating.  If
you start a race in a position far ahead of the other guy, you may be far
more likely to cross the finish line ahead of him.  Or not, as Aesop says,
of what may have been a slightly different race.>>

Or, it could be that the word occurs before thinking does.  It just appears
in the air.  And, this might be especially true of words that appear without
meaning -- and then seem to acquire meanings -- by some political
processses, that fall far short of global thermonuclear war.  As long as we
have ourselves to kick around (alas, poor nixon -- I knew him by his horrors
of ratiocinative biases), we shall not settle the question of meaning.

At best, meaning is not there in the same way that a thing is somewhen-where
definitively placed and placeable, by referential frameworks that are
inertially translatable, one to the other.  Meaning for a word is so closely
related to potentiality that it (the word) has, say, a statistical
distribution over a variety of states.  These individual states, though each
would be a meaning, would not be the meaning of a single word -- for some of
the states might belong to more than one word (as the problem of synonyms
might illustrate for us, were there such a thing as synonyms).  And,
antonyms?  Oh, please!  Do not get me started down this negative slope of
unthinking things (or is it unthinking <of> unthings?)!

So, is it possible that newspoetry has happened -- or is it only possible
that it may yet happen?

Honestly.  I can't answer for you, though I can  imagine that I can imagine
answer(s) -- some of them entertaining and self-amusing, some of them
informative and stative, and others otherwise.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick