From Wikipedia:
The laryngeal prominence is usually more prominent in adult men than in women or children. The growth of the larynx itself during puberty is responsible for the vocal instability in teenage boys. The laryngeal prominence is merely the protrusion one sees of the thyroid cartilage making up the body of the larynx. The laryngeal prominence is usually more prominent in adult males because the thyroid cartilage elongates during puberty, protruding out the front of the neck more noticeably. The result is that the two laminae (thin cartilage) of the thyroid cartilage that form the protrusion meet at an average angle of 90° in males, and 120° in females, so there is less cartilage protruding out in females.
Millicent
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Jul 28, 2010 1:26 pm
Subject: help, I can't find the answer!
I was looking at a reconstruction of a Neandertal male. His neck was hidden by his beard, and I wondered: is there an Adam's Apple behind it? I don't know if there's a way to tell from the fossil record. But one thought led, as it tends to, to another, and I found myself wondering if other primate males have them.
It seems to me perfectly reasonable to ask this of a poetry list. Faute de mieux.
While I'm at it, anybody know why human males have them? Do they have a function? Women seem to get along perfectly well without.
Best,
Mark
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"What a beautiful set of circumstances! What a lovely concatenation of particulars. Here is the poet alive in every sense of the word, and through every one of his senses. Instead of missing a beat or a part, Weiss’ fragments are like Chekhov’s short storiesthe more that gets left out, the more they seem to contain… One can hear echoes from all the various ancestors...[but] the voice, at its center, its core, is pure Mark Weiss. His use of the fragment is both elegant and bafflingly clear, a pure musical threnody…[it] opens a window, not only into a mind, but a person, a personality, this human figure at the emotional center of the poem."
M.G. Stephens, in Jacket. http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-weiss-rb-stephens.shtml
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