Precision and Poetics

When Caleb was just learning to speak, I loved to have him explain his world to me. At the time, I was in graduate school and one of the things I had to study was the development of language in children. He was always an outlier on the high side of the bell curve. He was one of those kids who rarely got frustrated by his lack of language facility because he was always able to talk his way around problems.

When he was about two he saw a large swarm of dragonflies, and he informed us: "Look, a dragonfly party!" This made total sense because while he didn't know what a swarm was, he knew what a party was.
When he wanted to describe a trail we were hiking that was under water, he called it the "juicy trail." Mom's Wisconsin house was "The sharing house" for obvious reasons.

Hannah was never as easy with her language usage; she was one of those kids who would get frustrated because we didn't know what she was saying, or at least we couldn't interpret what she meant. As the years have gone on, however, I've come to appreciate her thought process (although I still can't say I understand it.) She is a literalist who loves saying exactly what she means. She can't talk around problems like Caleb because talking around a problem means that she's not saying exactly what she wants to say. She needs precision

With this as a background, here is a conversation we had yesterday:

Me: "Here's an interesting quote. It's from Albert Camus. He was a French-Algerian writer. 'Autumn is a second spring, where every leaf is a flower.' What do you think he meant by that? (in the interest of full disclosure, I was reading the funny papers, and Mutts had this quote in it. I'm not so big a fan of Camus that I'd introduce him to eight and ten year old kids.)

Hannah: "Maybe he meant that the leaves are going to fall off the trees and decompose. After the winter, when spring arrives, flowers will grow better because of the composted leaves."

Me: "Um...well...that's an interesting point of view...."

Hannah: "Or maybe he meant that the leaves have colors like flowers in the spring."

Caleb: "I think I'd go with your second idea."

Hannah: "What's Alergian?"

Just try to explain poetry to a literalist. I dare you.