Magda Kapa is a master of the epigram. — Dave Bonta
ALL THE WORDS is a poetic dictionary, a collection of what the author calls “aphorisms, epigrams, or naked verses.” These short descriptions and comments on particular nouns are based on Magda Kapa’s personal observations and emotional reactions to experiences in the course of a year of her life. Originally, they were published as a series of tweets, none exceeding 140 characters, unfolding during the single calendar year of 2013.
Blurbs:
MAGDA KAPA was born in Greece and now lives in translation in northern Germany. She has worked as a freelance screenwriter and teaches Modern Greek and English. She writes poetry and short stories which have been published in online literary blogs and magazines, and she is also a photographer who shoots in film. Her work can be found at http://www. notborninenglish.wordpress.com and on Twitter @MagdaKapa
ALL the WORDS MAGDA KAPA
ALL the WORDS
ISBN 978-1-927496-06-0 Cover artwork, design and editing by Elizabeth Adams
Š2015 Magda Kapa
Published by Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal www.phoeniciapublishing.com
ALL the WORDS MAGDA KAPA
About ALL THE WORDS
This private dictionary has become something like a journal of aphorisms, epigrams or naked verses — sometimes looking for a poem and coming closer together, and sometimes running away from each other, contradicting and opposing each other. All of them are based on my personal observations and emotional reactions to readings, of all kinds, or everyday experiences and chats with friends online or in person. Despite their aphoristic form which can give a temporary relief to a sometimes overloaded human mind and soul, they are not my conclusions but my unfinished thoughts. They are my little flags to be followed or burned in time. They are crumbs I leave behind as I walk my way reading, thinking, and, of course, living. They do not claim to be universal truths, and, in their perfect crumb habit, some of them might not even be there for me if I went back the same way. But, right now, I enjoy looking at that track behind me.
When I started writing them I had no idea they’d become a project. It was also not a conscious decision that this dictionary should mainly consist of nouns. Also, some of them are “defined” more than once, proving how they actually escape easy definitions or how life keeps redefining them for me. In terms of form, each entry was a tweet, and thus no more than 140 characters, during the calendar year 2013. Some tweets, though, didn’t find their way to my blog posts and dictionary. Thanks for reading them.
Magda Kapa
January Love: always disproportionate Death: three lines, three photographs, a hundred days, a lot of numbers. Promises: Promised not to give any lately? Death: likes numbers. Love: can have a body or no body, and sometimes nobody.
LOVE DEATH AGE SEX
Dream: am Loss: the one gone won’t be there, and you fear that you’ve never been there for the one gone. Snow: without class consciousness; egalitarian beauty maker. Tenderness: to apply onto the deeper skin after we’ve peeled off our first; still pink and all thin and diaphanous. Tension: holding back movement. Age: too much life and not enough of it.
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Death: after time. Sleep: no time. Sex: extra time. Appreciation: true time. Communication: direct, please. Inspiration: that tap dripping in the middle of the night; you just want to shut it off but find yourself writing on the kitchen table. Memories: equally adored and feared for being our future. Snow: slow. Experience: The fourth cheap cocktail glass. Time: more, less, enough, never, always, again, gone. Soul: What we leave behind at places for others to find when wandering alone. Sometimes we find it ourselves again too. And so on. Friend: the one in the end. Mensch: fits in one body. 2
Pain: what’s cheap to share and hard to wipe away. Music: the red string connecting everything: Ariadne’s thread, Prometheus’ fire, our common mother’s womb. Forgiveness: Remember the boy next door who threw your first bicycle into the village stream? He was in love with you all along. Love: again. Home: a picture of movement; us moving towards an embrace. Time: Dance: bodies translating. Language: leaving the shore behind, going back into water. Sleep: the invisible door to an empty room. We put down our luggage, next to the stairs. Upstairs, there are people talking. Memory: has no bones and therefore can be formed with words into various shapes, then wrapped around a heart to kill or save.
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Distance: invisible substance. Absence: substantial distance. Death: lines. Fate: the game we play. Recognition: hands touching the white marble, following the beat from inside, and shaping that figure. Time: Solitude: a myth of your inner voice. Verse: pure thought ready to dance. Poetry: pure thought caught off guard. Inspiration: a prayer, or a choir, or a dive. Light: the idea of a tomorrow. Home: this now. You: the mirror I painted on your face. Ambition: when everything faded away, except for this hope which kept you alive. 4
Sex: it’s all of you, without excuse. Love: no matter what. Despair: a moment like an implosion, when breath becomes solid like a stone, and then is thrown into the deepest well.
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MIDNIGHT MIRROR NIGHT INSOMNIA February
Dream: there in here. Sehnsucht: here without there. Desire: Sehnsucht in a body. Language: like the air that turns into rain and waters the earth, thought turns into language. Same but different logos. Moon: a partly full life in quarters, sometimes old, sometimes new, and always in the dark. Water: could go through anything but of course it chooses the easiest way. (Probably male.) Fire: does go through anything but water. Midnight: not enough in the middle of the night. Midnight: not in the middle of the night enough. Sleep: our body’s caretaker. 6
Sleep: body snatcher. Sleep, what have you done with that me of yesterday? She had one or two thoughts I’d like back before she disappears. Mirror? Mirror: behind its nothing, hidden, the endless pictures of all the ones we’ve been and all the yesterdays, sorted in light and colour. Night: when young thoughts fly around in the dark, just like tiny little bats, soundless and shy. Help: a chance for the one helping. Regret: a winter word; likes fireplaces, old photo albums, remembers long names. Insomnia: just another way to be away, only a bit darker than usual. Insecurity: the flickering light at the entrance door. You see an exit. Night: a day’s second chance. Morning: comes earlier for sure. Mornings: all you have to do is to forget that night existed. 7
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About the Author
Magda Kapa was born in Greece and now lives in translation in northern Germany. She has worked as a freelance screenwriter and teaches Modern Greek and English. She writes poetry and short stories which have been published in online literary blogs and magazines, and she is also a photographer who shoots in film. Her work can be found at http://www.notborninenglish. wordpress.com and on Twitter @MagdaKapa
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About Phoenicia Publishing
Phoenicia Publishing is an independent press based in Montreal but involved, through a network of online connections, with writers and artists all over the world. We are interested in words and images that illuminate culture, spirit, and the human experience. A particular focus is on writing and art about travel between cultures—whether literally, through lives of refugees, immigrants, and travelers, or more metaphorically and philosophically— with the goal of enlarging our understanding of one another through universal and particular experiences of change, displacement, disconnection, assimilation, sorrow, gratitude, longing and hope. We are committed to the innovative use of the web and digital technology in all aspects of publishing and distribution, and to making high-quality works available that might not be viable for larger publishers. We work closely with our authors, and are pleased to be able to offer them a greater share of royalties than is normally possible. Your support of this endeavor is greatly appreciated.
Our complete catalogue is online at www.phoeniciapublishing.com
Magda Kapa is a master of the epigram. — Dave Bonta
ALL THE WORDS is a poetic dictionary, a collection of what the author calls “aphorisms, epigrams, or naked verses.” These short descriptions and comments on particular nouns are based on Magda Kapa’s personal observations and emotional reactions to experiences in the course of a year of her life. Originally, they were published as a series of tweets, none exceeding 140 characters, unfolding during the single calendar year of 2013.
“A collection of jottings and registerings exploring the great continents of death, love, dream and time along with their archipelagos, islands and subsidiary states, Magda Kapa’s All the Words is, as its own definition of poetry suggests, ‘pure thought caught off guard’. Here thoughts are rethought, rediscovered and re-explored to produce the pared-down core of poetry, the beauty of which lies in concision, poignancy, yearning, restlessness, and an ancient yet fresh sense of the world as solitude under the stars.” — George Szirtes, poet and translator “Magda Kapa is a stunning sharpshooter. Her words make you gasp with their speed and accuracy as they hit the bullseye. Her gentle humour will disarm you. These aphorisms are life stories, these fragments shine a light into the deep well of our motivations.” — Natasha Badhwar, columnist at Mint Lounge “This is a word book more bestiary than dictionary, reminding us that words are fundamentally strange and take on different appearances through time as they molt and metamorphose. Unlike dictionary definitions, Magda Kapa’s deft sketches don’t pin down but release back into the wild. Her acute awareness of the provisional quality of truth is an insight seldom encountered outside of ancient wisdom traditions; what a treat it was in 2013 to see these unruly, reverent/ irreverent epigrams take shape on Twitter, that Heraclitean torrent into which no one can step unchanged, and what a treat it is now to have them on paper in such a beautiful edition. I’ll make room for it on the shelf with Zhuangzi, Yunmen, Qoheleth and Idries Shah.” — Dave Bonta, poet, publisher of MovingPoems.com
MAGDA KAPA was born in Greece and now lives in translation in northern Germany. She has worked as a freelance screenwriter and teaches Modern Greek and English. She writes poetry and short stories which have been published in online literary blogs and magazines, and she is also a photographer who shoots in film. Her work can be found at http://www.notborninenglish. wordpress.com and on Twitter @MagdaKapa 9 781927 496060
ALL the WORDS MAGDA KAPA