cattywampus

ADV. Performed in a non-straightforward manner; approached from an unexpected angle; askew; askance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet and philosopher whose idea of the "Oversoul" may prefigure contemporary astrophysicists' notion that "all matter is is made up of the same elements and energies and governed by the same laws" because the universe proceeds from a Big Bang. "Poets may go at the big truths a little cattywampus, but sometimes they do get to them" (Ted Kooser, _The Poetry Home Repair Manual_, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 141)

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