What is an adjective? (Anne Carson)

What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning “placed on top,” “added,” “appended,” “imported,” “foreign.” Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are latches of being.

This is the second paragraph of Anne Carson’s poem-novel-romance-history-etc. Autobiography of Red, a book I got in the mail yesterday from BLCKDGRD (which: thank you man!) and feel a totally electric feeling about. The passage above I mentally highlighted, for classroom purposes, I suppose, and otherwise, and the twists in dives and dips in this book-thing are, I don’t know, what hyperbole should I grab? 

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