Thanks Rebecca, Alison, Mark, Doug, and anyone else who's contributed on
this thread. I've got plenty of food for thought, and, going forward with
this stuff, whatever calls I make, I've less excuse in ignorance.
There's rarely much point in arguing fine points of poetic response, I
reckon, except when it's to reveal some hidden complexity which might
justify a passage which seems not to work. So, since I've nothing like that
left in my locker, I'm not going to argue.
I think I should say, though, that I've learned something about specifically
American possibilities of reading: how elements that work for me in very
particular ways may work either very differently, or not at all, from the
other side of the ocean. (That may be a counterpart to why I find some
well-regarded American writing bland and / or garrulous.)
The associations of "sierra" is obviously a case in point. I now understand
the word better than I did. That's not to say I'll rethink my usage. My
sympathy with Beckett's suggestion that the only way to write in English is
to treat it as a dead language finds local support here in the OED:
sierra
[Sp. sierra:<em>L. serra saw.]
1. a. In Spain and parts of Latin America: A range of hills or mountains,
rising in peaks which suggest the teeth of a saw.
. . .
b. In general use: A mountain-range of this description.
1807 R. Southey Lett. from England II. xxxiv. 95 A range of mountains
standing in the three provinces of Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford...
This sierra is justly admired for the beauty of its form.
1850 W. Irving Mahomet xxxii. (1853) 141 Their rocky sierras on the east
separated Azerbaijan from..the shores of the Caspian.
1865 W. G. Palgrave Arabia I. 96 The main range of Djebel Shomer, a long
purple sierra of most picturesque outline.
Azerbaijan is near enough to the central Asian incursions of the Tang to
leave me feeling my usage not entirely unjustified. At least I'm not
definitively on the wrong continent.
I'll go think about it. Meanwhile, thanks all, again. I value that texture
of response.
Best,
Trevor
|