From the school of hard knocks to Oregon’s Ducks, Topaz knows what education means. While living on the street, his love of words was expressed through poetry. Now in his junior year at the University of Oregon, studying neuroscience and linguistics, he explores how words shape the mind — and how the mind, in turn, shapes the stories we live by.
His book Poetic Phonetics: Five Book uncovers what Leonard Cohen once called “the ancient Western code.” Topaz calls it clown code — because behind the laughter is tragedy. The tragedy of clown code is that the hatred of women is built in. Drawing from both street slang and sacred scripture, Five Book traces how that ancient hatred still echoes through our everyday language, from the glass ceiling to the words we joke with.
Perhaps only someone who grew up in a city with a Parthenon — a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom, weaving, and warfare — could feel how differently the air moves in a city dominated by a space phallus. Five Book tells those truths and names those names, revealing the hidden architecture of language: its secrets, its traumas, and its possibilities for healing.
- KBOO