“Almost all poetry is a failure,” Charles Bukowski is said to have contended, “because it sounds like somebody saying, Look, I have written a poem.”
…
Never will I allude to the English Language or tongue without exultation. This is the tongue that spurns laws, as the greatest tongue must. It is the most capacious vital tongue of all, — full of ease, definiteness, and power, — full of sustenance, — an enormous treasure house, or ranges of treasure houses, arsenals, granary, chock full of so many contributions from the north and from the south, from Scandinavia, from Greece and Rome—from Spaniards, Italians, and the French—that its own sturdy home-dated Angles-bred words have long been outnumbered by the foreigners whom they lead—which is all good enough, and indeed must be. America owes immeasurable respect and love to the past, and to many ancestries, for many inheritances, — but of all that America has received from the past from the mothers and fathers of laws, arts, letters, etc., by far the greatest inheritance is the English Language—so long in growing—so fitted.
Dwight Garner quotes Bukowski and cites with link the Whitman essay (The Atlantic, April 1904) in his article “Dwight Garner Shares From His Stash of Other Writers’ Words” (NYTimes, 11-1-20).
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
The Rhetoric of Figments
A classic mnemonic for spelling “graffiti” is that it “doesn’t have two fucking titties.” And the classic graffiti on locker room urinals is “A lot of pricks hang out here.” These durable tropes capture the sophomoric tenor of Chris Malone’s venom:
“Congratulations to the state of GA [Georgia] and Fat Albert @staceyabrams because you have truly shown America the true works of cheating in an election again!!!” Mr. Malone wrote. “Enjoy the buffet Big Girl! You earned it!!! Hope the money was good, still not governor!” [Posted Tuesday night, January 5, 2021]
(Neil Vigdor, “‘Hateful’ Tweet About Stacey Abrams Costs University Football Coach His Job,” NYTimes, 1-8-21)
“Fat Albert,” a 2004 movie, is based on a figment of Bill Cosby’s imagination.
“… Because of the high school setting and gentle boy-girl crushes that partially drive the story, Fat Albert will have more appeal for middle grade kids and tweens.” (www.commonsensemedia.org)
Driven by the right-wing figment of election fraud, Chris Malone, an arguably grown-up white man, traduces “Fat Albert“ into a body-shaming label applied to a Black woman almost elected Georgia governor in 2018, and whose fight against voter suppression has recently helped put two new Democratic senators in national office. “Enjoy the buffet Big Girl” garnishes the spite with misogyny.
This is a taste of only one dish of Coach Malone’s rancid smorgasbord, but there’s no point in gorging on blind fury.
As an act of speech violence, Malone’s sally is garden variety invective of the sort fired gutlessly from the sniper roosts of social media. Its only distinction, other than having cost “an assistant and offensive line coach for the Mocs” his current job (spoiler: he’ll find another), is to add context to the myriad acts of physical violence carried out in Washington D.C., only hours after his tweet, on January 6, 2021.
(c) 2020 JMN