Good Scrabble words come in small packages.
Stephin Merritt is best known as the frontman of long-running indie-pop band the Magnetic Fields. But song lyrics aren’t the only words he is excited by — the musician has just published a book that pays homage to the smallest playable words in Scrabble: two-letter words.
“All the sex, money, and power in Scrabble lies in the two-letter words,” said Merritt.
Merritt will give a reading from his short read, “101 Two-Letter Words,” at PowerHouse Arena in Dumbo on Oct. 21. He said the idea for the book — which contains a four-line poem and an illustration for each of the words — came about while he was on tour and trying to bone up on the Scrabble-inspired smartphone game Words With Friends during his down time.
“I wasn’t very good at it because I didn’t know all of the two-letter words,” he said. “So I started writing my own mnemonic devices to remember them.”
Two-letter words are key to winning the game, because they allow a player to more easily put down multiple words on a single turn, Merritt explained.
“You need to know your two-letter words,” he said.
To help readers remember them even better, each poem has a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast to create a visual memory cue. This is just good common sense to Merritt.
“It never occurred to me not to have the illustrations,” he said.
Merritt, who once had a studio space near the Williamsburg Bridge, said he does not have a favorite two-letter word, but he does have a favorite poem based on one.
“My poems are like my children,” he said. “So I only like the first one.”
And that is “aa,” which is a type of lava.
“There are two kinds of lava: aa / and pahoehoe / Aa is more jagged, and / pahoehoe flowy,” the poem reads.
The PowerHouse Arena reading will include a discussion of the book with local author Emma Straub, who is also Merritt’s Words With Friends buddy.
Stephin Merritt reads from “101 Two-Letter Words” at PowerHouse Arena [37 Main St. between Water and Plymouth streets in Dumbo, (718) 666–3049, www.powerhousearena.com]. Oct. 21 at 7 pm. Free.
