SPEAKING ANIMATE: PREVERBS is one of seven preverb complexes comprising the unpublished book Exchanging Intentions, itself one of seven books of preverbs, of which the first to be published was VERBAL PARADISE (Zasterle: 2011). A preverb is like a proverb, a one-line capture of wisdom, but at the raw stage before wisdom. Such an open intentional act of language invites configurative reading as a singular event of variable meaning. An instance of axial poetics, it puts language on its own stepped-up recognizance.