[RCL]

If you love etymologies, you have to adore Thoreau’s works. Rarely a page goes by in Walden, for instance, without a handful of etymological puns. One of my early research projects, working title The Depths of Walden Pun, fished out hundreds, some grotesque, adding an extra reason to laugh or smile at the surface word-play. Two of my favorites, which I’ve written about in several ways, are in Walden’s “Conclusion”: Exaggeration and Extravagance.

Thoreau’s Extravagance

"I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander. . . .without bounds. . . . I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression." Walden, Conclusion”

He’s radical with etymologies,
extravagantly leaps linguistic fences,
heaps the roots in punning histories,
exaggerates beyond the common senses.

He says our parlor parlance is absurd,
too distanced from its sources, mere parlaver,
its far-fetched figures, tropes and symbols blurred
in parables. But his are rooted, clever.

Out on the pond, he turns his tropes to pun
upon a trickster loon, his moonstruck double,
whose loony antics keep him on the run.
Two lunatics, they’ve turned into a couple.

Extravagantly thorough in this game,
he puns outlandishly on his own name.

From Ghost Trees