The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry Book

I believe that we can all agree that Fenollosa's argument has less to do with Chinese etymology and much more to do with a theory of poetry. And that theory, though illustrated rather poorly in this case, is a brilliant one.

If one accepts that language is built out of metaphor, and that our present use of language represents centuries of metaphorical use and construction, Fenollosa's leap of faith-- that the Chinese character represents a sort of instant etymological study-- is rather easy to excuse. Fenollosa wants each word, in every language, to do such work in the mind of the poet, and, with luck, the mind of the reader. He thinks that concrete verbs, the wellspring of language in his theory, are the medium for such thought, and clearly expressed action is their container. Eschewing abstract verbs as the province of logic and degraded/lazy poetry, Fenollosa calls for a return of the transitive verb, of a multiplicity of verbs, to the English language. Indeed, his frequent asides about the English language should clue the reader in that his subject is not really Chinese language at all, but a kind of comparative study of (his vision of) the relative strengths of tradition in each, by which I mean how cognizant the poet and his/her readers are of the etymology and previous usage of each word utilized.