#title “Y” Is A Crooked Letter #author Ron Sakolsky #SORTauthors Ron Sakolsky; #date 2014 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/391-springsummer-2014/y-crooked-letter]] #lang en #pubdate 2014-07-01 #notes Fifth Estate #391, Spring/Summer 2014 — Anarchy! What kind of anarch am I on my best days? The kind that eludes the prisons of “ists” and “isms” for the freedom of the “Y”. Why? That is the question. During my childhood daze my mother dismissed my incessant questioning of her authority (my why-ning as she called it) with her favorite parental pronouncement, “Y is a crooked letter.” Her disarming words as inscrutable as a kaballah spell repetitively employed in the hope of confining my untamed anarchic sensibilities within the hard certainties of the alphabet. Not to be outdone, my own alphabetical weapons have always been (direct) action verbs, laughing lettered accomplices, strategically invoked verbal maneuvers, for artfully dodging the “ism”, nimbly sidestepping the “ist,” and eagerly embracing the convulsive beauty of the “Y”. A flock of Why-words Joyfully taking flight from the sharpened tip of the critical crook at the overflowing end of the word anarch-Y. Each why the harbinger of new beginnings. Inspired by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s response when asked if he was an anarchist. “On my best days,” he said with an honest modesty. To paraphrase Ferlinghetti, I am a poet “on my best days.” Ron Sakolsky publishes [[https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?subcats=Y&pcode_from_q=Y&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&search_performed=Y&q=oystercatcher&dispatch=search.results&security_hash=ff58b50b6bf0eaa97c5777553ac56be8][Oystercatcher]] on Denman Island, B.C.