A word is a kind of sound. There is no word which cannot be seen as sound. But most sounds are not looked on as constantly standing for something else. The sound in the letters t-a-b-l-e is no more sound as such than that in the letters w-a-b-l-e. But the sound wable can stand for anything. If I choose to do so, I can make it stand for a Japanese lady in distress. Should enough people—once I have chosen to do so—enough people together also choose to see wable as meaning a Japanese lady in distress, then the sound wable would be taken from the limitlessness, immeasurability, formlessness of dark sound, and would be given a definite representing existence. Table is to wable, at the present moment, as definite is to indefinite, a bench to trees growing wildly in a not so well known forest.

All words are a giving of form to the unformed. Words are shapes. They add a precise, going-ahead quality to sound.

One of the important mysteries of the world is the relation of the sound mountain to the thing mountain. It should be seen that the word mountain as such, is just as much a thing as the mountain; for the word affects us, too. Words can be said to be the results of a successful love of objects. Once a word sticks to an object, as in a language, there is a relation of word and object like the best in love, from a logical point of view.

In a successful word like mountain—because no one at this time wants to change the word mountain to a vague, unaccepted, “unshaped” sound or group of sounds like mountain—there is, always going on, a help by the word of the thing mountain, and a help by the thing mountain of the word-thing mountain. They can’t do without each other. Without the word mountain, all the possibilities of the thing mountain could not be had. The feeling quality of the mountain is in the word mountain, and the word can do things for the mountain, the mountain unassisted or alone, can’t.

The senses and logic come into a form-chemical one in a word. Every word is both sensual and formal, or logical.

The word sizzle, for example, takes care of all the sizzlings in history and all that can be. It is tremendously inclusive. But every time you hear the word sizzle, you hear a specific sound—hearing, a definite sense, always comes into play. The word sizzle, however, since it is a specific term, covering infinite possibility, a concrete item including a general form, is logical; for logic is the observation of specific and general, same and different, one and many, in thought—in all instances of thought.

The word sizzle has to do with all the other senses. Of course, you hear it first. But there’s heat in the word, and you touch heat. There’s smoke in the word, or meat, or something else, and you can smell these. Sizzling likewise affects your taste. And of course you can see it. As you don’t run away from the word, and go into it, you feel all the senses going about their affecting business at once. Meanwhile, the fact that the word sizzle stands for a general possibility of existence, is also apprehended, or to be apprehended.

Further, there is a rising and quieting of sound in sizzle; a crescendo and decrescendo, growth and lessening, largeness and smallness. There is a curved quality to the smoke, and a straight line quality (the smoky aspect of sizzling can hardly be separated from sizzling per se). And there are sharpness, and wideness, point and softness, in sizzling.

All the things I have mentioned are in the word sizzle, seen as a representation of a possibility of, or happening in, existence. This means that it can be said, the word itself is poetic; this can be said with sobriety.

Suppose, however, a short line of verse was:

Sizzling: green.

Then what the writer of the line would be asking for is a consideration of the universe as it is to be seen in sizzling as going with the universe as it is to be seen in green. Two aspects of the universe are brought together.

Is a feeling of the universe had by seeing sizzling and green together, more than without such a seeing? Is there order and surprise, continuity and newness in “Sizzling: green” seen together? Well, if there is, then the words go more towards poetry even than the words singly. For poetry is quantitative, too.

Every word is about the universe as a whole. A word says, “The universe can be this way; and I, the word, show it.” If man accepts the word, he is saying the word does do something good in the way of organizing the universe as manyness or as entities.