What Color is Saturday?

If you instantly knew the answer to that question, you might be a synesthete.

After hearing a professor discuss this term all semester long I pursued further study. The term "synesthesia" might be familiar to you from poetry classes. Some poets mix and mingle sensory experiences; they describe one kind of sense impression using words that usually describe another. It's synesthesia when Poe writes about "molten-golden notes," or when Keats calls a plot of ground "melodious" or speaks of "sunburnt mirth," or when Johnny Cash sings, "Somehow I learned how to listen to a sound like the sun going down."

But this isn't just a poetic device. Some people are born "synesthetes"--a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another. This is a documented phenomenon that has been known in medical circles for at least 300 years.

Synesthetes don't intentionally mix sensations, and they don't "imagine" things a certain way--it just strikes them as a fact, for instance, that Saturday is red. That day will always remain, for that person, the same color. (But another synesthete might always see it as a different color.)

Some synesthetes see shapes or designs when listening to music; some taste words; some see colors when experiencing a certain taste or smell.

One famous example is Vladimir Nabokov, who as a small child complained to his mother that the letters on his wooden alphabet blocks were all the wrong colors.

Another example from my professor: When she is in severe pain, she sees the color orange; so when she was in labor, instead of telling her husband, "It hurts so much," she said, "There's so much orange." Furthermore, she explained that the color orange strikes her like a physical pain, and being visually assaulted by it for very long will cause a bad headache.

Researchers estimate that about 1 in 25,000 people are synesthetes. It tends to run in families, is more likely to occur in women than in men, and more in left-handed people than right-handed ones. Synesthetes tend to have excellent memories, but not so great math and spatial navigation skills.

The Return (A Hopkins Cento)

For my return to blogging I decided to post my first attempt at writing a cento. For those who don't know, a cento is a poem made entirely of lines from other poems. The name comes from the Latin word meaning a cloak made out of patches! It differs from found poetry in that every line is taken from another poem, instead of just any borrowed material.

Virgilian centos were popular in the Middle Ages, when poets would use lines from Virgil to write about religious themes. Here is my attempt at one using lines taken from those of my favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, entitled "The Return":

I will appear, looking such charity,
It will flame out like shining from shook foil.
Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where springs not fail.
Or ancient mounds that cover bones
Spring, that but now were shut
To the stars, lovely-asunder.

I did say yes
With the sea-romp over the wreck,
And find the uncreated light.
And I have asked to be
Lower than death and the dark,
An ark for the listener, for the lingerer,
For him who ever thought with love of me.

* * * * *

Okay, here is my second attempt, finished today! It's a G.K. Chesterton canto (I know, I couldn't resist! :)

Nazareth

A child sits in a sunny place
Pure as white lilies in a watery space
Laughing everlastingly
The joy without a cause
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free
Between us and the sea

Though earth be filled with waters dark
Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes!
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
God made the sun to crown his head
The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee
Aflame with faith, and free

* * * * *

That's all for now. Dylan Thomas shall be next!