Paraclocks
The present is so strong, the past has gone
To nothing, hovering empty ghost, is lost,
As lost as every future with a dawn
That never happens. There’s no Pentecost
Because we do not need one. I have you.
A shoulder that I love is stronger than
The Metaphysics of John Donne. Too blue,
And sad, and clever, they are like that man
Who posits life is nightmares in a dream
Concocted in some super brain that won’t
Wake up till you and I are like a seam
Of gold and diamonds formed in Allah’s wont.
A no-hands clock refuses ticks in space,
No you, a vacuum without a face.
~ Phillip Whidden
Ah. I found this discussion of the odd two-syllable pronunciation of “vacuum” which is standard. Someone does mention (an American) hearing a British pronunciation of the word as having three syllables, pronouncing each of the “u”s in succession as in the word “continuum”: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/406698/why-is-vacuum-pronounced-%CB%88v%C3%A6-kju%CB%90m-and-not-%CB%88v%C3%A6-kju%CB%90-%C9%99m-when-other-uum-wor
It is also mentioned that old dictionaries (one from 1909) only give the three syllable pronunciation, and some more recent ones give the three-syllable pronunciation of “vacuum” as a secondary option to the more common two-syllable version.
So we might accept the three syllable pronunciation of “vacuum,” as a sort of antiquarian or nonstandard usage. It must just be how Whidden himself pronounces the word, since works best for the meter as it shows up in others of his sonnets (I just started looking at more which turned up in a search for the word in his encyclopedia: it’s very convenient to be able to do a single word search like that for all his sonnets).
I suppose if I were editing a collection of his sonnets, I would provide a footnote or something for each of his uses of “vacuum,” explaining it either as “archaic” (which I think would needle him a bit, even though in other respects he is “anti-modernist”) or as an “alternate” pronunciation).
Yes. I pronounce “vacuum” as a three-syllable word.