How could the world be organized if the order of the alphabet was in a different order? If we didn’t standardly use the alphabet to organize things like dictionaries and class lists? Could you imagine needing to find a word in a dictionary and there was no order to it, opening a page of the dictionary and to see this murder scene, I would be horrified.
Optimistic: having a positive outlook
Dog: a domesticated carnivorous mammal
Water: a colorless, odorless, tasteless liquid
Puzzle: feeling confused because one does not understand a certain concept
I think even different languages are very dependent on this type of order, because it IS the easiest way to organize lists and mass amounts of information, especially when the alphabet is such a universal and elementary skill to have.
In the poem Zulus by Percival Everett, he is challenging this type of dependency we have on that alphabetical order. He uses the standard alphabet to organize the poem, each page is a different letter, however, each word doesn’t always start with the letter used on that page.
K is for kiss
and what a kiss from
the beautiful twin
“Sweet Helen, make me immortal…”
K is for immortality
loaded warm about the heart,
an awful weight
And a bad idea.
Hades would agree.
K is for killing,
oft times kindly done.
K is for kiss.
By doing this, Everett is taking the strict alphabetical order the English language has and twisting it to cause disorder so to speak.
I understand why he chose to put this poem in a book titled re:(gesture), so, in my mind is giving the alphabet that glorious gesture when you put your favorite finger way up in the air. He took the English Alphabet and in my mind, I can imagine him saying “hahaha watch this” and twists it, which then creates this disorganized but at the same time alphabetically structured poem.
I have often dabbled with how if I was ever asked to recite the alphabet backwards, I would be screwed. I wouldn’t be able to do it because we never practice the backwards alphabet in school, we were drilled with how to do it the right way but never backwards. This just proves how important the alphabetical order is to anyones life.