The Strength of Words

[sfcch]

If you want to continue this discussion, Voyage of Discovery is probably the place to do it.

The short version -

I like Howl. Some reasons why I think he gets away with a long, unstructured sequence of images - there's
very little filler (of the 'on top of it all' type); the images, which are surprising and precise, are packed in
together.
There's a certain amount of redundancy and repetition, but the breathless language and simple sentence
structure carries the reader through.
I other words, I wouldn't call it 'wordy' exactly.
Harry

Harry:
Here are some thoughts that I would like to run by you:
Written words are fixed graphic symbols of expression. Unlike spoken words, they cannot be modulated to convey emotions. By convention, words should mean the same to everybody. But even in a homogeneous culture, written words elicit different emotional reactions amongst readers. Therefore, meaning alone is not what makes words "weak" or "strong" in poetry; other factors must come into play. A somewhat intangible connotation
attached to words may be a factor. This being subjective explains why readers may differ widely in their preference for a given choice of words.
So, how am to I know that "on top of it all" is weak for you when Ginsberg's line
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" meets your approval?
To my ears, the latter sounds like a journal entry. Even though the line means exactly the same to both you and me, you seem to like it, whereas I don't. How come?
Outside the realm of personal preference, where does the strength of a word or a line lie? How to find "le mot juste" for everybody or for just enough people to make a poem successful? Not every word can be a metaphor, or a simile, the poem would not move if this were the case. We must also employ every day, simple words to express or connect ours thoughts, otherwise we would sound bombastic, stuffy or ostentatious. How make plain words strong when they mean the same to everybody and their connotation can, at best, only be guessed?
Thank you again for you help:
S
PS. Even though I don't share your entushiasm for Howl, I am delighted to know that at least somebody does not think that the number of words is what makes a poem wordy or prosey.

[Harry Rutherford]

Originally posted by sfcch:
So, how am to I know that "on top of it all" is weak for you when Ginsberg's line
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" meets your approval?
To my ears, the latter sounds like a journal entry. Even though the line means exactly the same to both you and me, you seem to like it, whereas I don't. How come?


Well, my opinion isn't meant to be the last word on the subject anyway; it's just my opinion. There's plenty of room in the world (and even within PFFA) for people to have different tastes.

Part of the reason I like Howl is sentimental - the first time I encountered it was on a particularly twisted evening visiting a friend at Oxford which ended with him drunkenly declaiming the whole poem.

But if I had to defend my suggestion that the phrase 'on top of it all' will usually come across as wordy, compared to Howl, the argument would go like this -

Verbs, nouns, and descriptive adjectives/adverbs add content; they bring something new into a poem.
Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns, which serve a grammatical function, and intensity or temporal adjective/adverbs (some, quite, fairly, often, sometimes) don't add much.

The opening of Howl -

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...
actually has a high density of what I've described as 'content words', often used in an interesting way - 'negro streets' and 'angry fix' are striking turns of phrase.

'on top of it all' is a five word phrase that does not have content in this sense. It's just a way off joining two phrases together; you could replace it with 'and' without losing much.

To be honest, I wouldn't have picked Howl to use as a model, but I hope I've explained what I mean.

Harry

[gecian]

We've discussed "prosiness" previously:
http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/Forum11/HTML/000408.html
http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/Forum11/HTML/000489.html
http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/Forum11/HTML/000433.html

You might also find Nanphi's piece "The Sword" and comments in the Prose forum of interest.

(I'd say that among content-words, verbs and nouns are weightier -- carry more content -- than descriptive adjectives or adverbs. And even non-content words can sometimes be made to carry content, by using them in an unusual manner.

That non-content words do not usually add to the strength of a poem does not mean that you can just leave out articles and conjunctions. Irregular grammar is often very damaging to a piece. The thing to do is to play with various versions of the sentence & find the version with the highest density of nouns and verbs.)

[This message has been edited by gecian (edited 06-05-2002).]

[dmjones]

stcch, Harry;
I realize I wasn't asked, but it is my opinion "wordy" in the context of a poem, means words that are seemly added as ornaments or decoration and really do nothing to add to the image the poem is trying to convey. I apologize for butting in.

------------------
dmjones

[This message has been edited by dmjones (edited 06-05-2002).]

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Well, I'm going to say the dreaded word: "Flow."

To me, "wordy" pertains to words that impede the flow of the poem, or prose, due to their presence or occasionally their absence.

With fiction, a common occurrence is the "This draft is longer, but it reads shorter." By adding words--and sometimes content--you can make a piece flow better, so it reads more quickly.

There are plenty of words that "mean nothing," but still have their uses. The main one is the pause for breath. In fiction, you drop in the "she said" or "she said" whereever in a sentence you'd need a pause longer than a comma but shorter than a period. The two beats it takes the reader's eye to read past those "filler" words makes it so that the sentence is read with the same cadence as speech. A longer pause is indicated by either an adverb or prepositional phrase tacked onto the speaking verb, or even by interruption by a short sentence of action.

Of course, ideally, the "filler words" will also serve some other function--indicating the speaker, providing content not apparent from the dialogue, etc.--but sometimes they're just there for the space.

Poetic language, whether in prose or verse, tends to be highly crystalized descriptive language, so there isn't as much room for filler words unless they're still serving some other function--alliterating or rhyming with the active verbs, for example.

I didn't read the original context, but "up on top of it all" to me reads as a clichee-ette, a little tiny clichee of the type where the old typesetters would have the readymade phrase to drop into the press. It's small enough and bland enough that it's inoccuous, but as a consequence, reads "prosy" because it's not the highly crystalized and original language that characterizes poetry. You could throw it into a novel and not have anyone blink, but in a poem, where there isn't as much space for painting a picture and the filler words are consequently smaller, it sticks out as this blah bit of nothingness.

The first words of "Howl" up to the comma work as an essay-style thesis statement which is expanded and expounded upon in the rest of the poem, which has the length to deal with it. In a shorter poem, they'd be too long.

Kevin



[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited 06-05-2002).]

[Barbara Jean]

Wordiness is like an overdressed woman. She could be wearing a perfect set of pearls; but if she is also wearing a zillion cheap gold chains, bangles and spangles, you will never even notice the pearls.

At the same time, poetry can also be teeming with simultaneity, discordant and overblown.

We are fonder of the first kind of poetry on boards. However, the rebel poem in the hands of a good writer who throws out the modern, compressed sensibility can also be a rewarding and fresh read. But writing outside the lines, so to speak, takes a deft and experienced hand to pull it off.

Barbara



[This message has been edited by Toklas (edited 06-05-2002).]

[Dunc]

It's about saying something and saying it tightly, getting the focus exact. Repetition of ideas (as a rule), irrelevance, prolixity and fillers (there's some overlap in those categories) don't provide what's needed. "on top of it all" might be okay if it's been loaded up for meaning, or is a precision brushstroke for a leisurely tone - I haven't seen the original - but otherwise it sounds looser - five words, very little content - rather than tighter to me. Regards / Dunc

[This message has been edited by Dunc McReil (edited 06-06-2002).]

[sfcch]

Thanks to all for participating in what turned out to be a very interesting dicussion.The reason why I initiated this topic was partly because there seems to be an umbalanced tilt towards short and condensed poems in these forums.
This is somewhat odd,since it doesn't reflect the real world of poetry where the number of words in a poem can be highly variable.
Correct me if I am wrong,but I think that even some of the more skilled PFFA members sometimes take the number of words in a poem as evidence of wordiness,irrespective of the weight of the words.
I have the impression that, as they climb the ladder towards the higher forums, poems begin to shrink in size, as if this were some sort of requirement to post higher up.
Also, short poems seem to get more reviews than the long ones.
Can somebody explain this phenomenon?
Thanks
S

[This message has been edited by sfcch (edited 06-06-2002).]

[debi z]

I think that it depends on what you mean by 'long' poems? My sense is that many of the poems that have received positive reactions have been 'long' poems, but I'm unsure how you are defining length.

debi

[gecian]

Thanks to all for participating in what turned out to be a very interesting dicussion.The reason why I initiated this topic was partly because there seems to be an umbalanced tilt towards short and condensed poems in these forums.

As Barbara said, these poems are easier to do well, so the average short poem has less flaws than the average long poem and the crits reflect this.

Shortish poems are also easier to crit. See below.

Correct me if I am wrong,but I think that even some of the more skilled PFFA members sometimes take the number of words in a poem as evidence of wordiness,

I've never consciously held the opinion that many words = wordiness. A wordy piece can be short (your poem about the moongazer in C&C a while ago) and a compressed piece can be long if the author has lots to say.

I have the impression that, as they climb the ladder towards the higher forums, poems begin to shrink in size,

I don't have the statistics, but I have noticed no such thing.

as if this were some sort of requirement to post higher up.

Recently (in Gripes), I suggested half-seriously that haikus in the higher forums should be deleted on sight. Didn't hear any minimalist roars.

Also, short poem gets more reviews than the long ones.

This is because short poems are easier to crit in detail. I can crit the average 20-line poem in about 20 minutes but (good) long pieces take hours of toil just to get the general structure of ideas and incidents.

Most long poems posted in the lower forums of pffa are simply too boring to drag oneself through.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

I don't know about the "long poem" thing. I got some excellent comments, and quite a few of them, on "The Tale of the Parrot," which is three pages of trochaic tetrameter, both in Scansion Mansion and Humor. Got the meter patched up, the pacing of the intro, and even esoteric points, such as the names of demons, fixed.

Some of the comments were "Here's the sorts of things you should fix and here's a couple examples," but with a long piece, that's really all that's necessary.

I just went and critiqued an epic "The Firefly" over in General C&C 1 or 2. It's in the right forum, since it's not up to the standards of Merciless or High, and it's not (yet) in anything close enough to a regular meter to be worth working on in Scansion.

Epics and ballads, however, take more time than shorter pieces, so you won't see as many of them.

Kevin

[sfcch]

Thank you Debi and Kevin for sharing your thoughts.Special thanks to Gecian who was brave enough to come back one more time into the discussion.
I am relieved to know that you are not biased against long poems.For a moment,I thought novices were getting the idea that only short is beautiful.
Best Regards
S

[This message has been edited by sfcch (edited 06-06-2002).]

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Well, with the novices, I think gecian hit the nail on the head when s/he said that bad long poems were just too boring to drag yourself through, and consequently are going to get ignored.

An atrocious haiku, on the other hand, is over before you blink.

I also think that handling a long poem takes a somewhat different set of skills than handling a short one. Foremost is the matter of keeping the reader's interest. There's plotting, of course, in narrative verse, but there are other tricks as well.

For example, just reading Hopkins "The Leaden Tone/The Golden Tone" and plotwise there's nothing there, since it's not a plot poem, and essay-wise, the ending is telegraphed with a brick. But the sonics are so incredibly pretty that you read to the end just for the sheer lavish beauty of the thing.

Kevin

[Clive2]

Never mind the length, feel the quality, to paraphrase - massively - a British sitcom title from years back. The point isn't length or lack of it, it's whether it works or not.

I was told that every word in a poem should move that poem along in some way. If you can't justify a word's presence by this criteria, then it probably doesn't need to be there. If you can cut words and the poem remains unharmed, they are probably not needed.

But, just to stir the pot a little, this applies when you are talking about lyric poetry. In book-length narrative poetry, you might be able to get away with a few lines that are not as dense and compact as they could be, otherwise it would be like trying to eat a whole Christmas cake in one sitting.

Them's my thoughts.

[This message has been edited by Clive2 (edited 06-07-2002).]

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Well, longer lengths give you the time to do some things sheerly for entertainment. Like the ballet interlude in the middle of some operas--it isn't strictly necessary, but it's very pretty and fun, and if you're going for the entertainment, it can be the best part of the show.

The Wife of Bath's Prologue is about as long as her Tale, but very fun.

Kevin

[sfcch]

Well-put, Clive and Ken.
I think that, even if not essential to the meaning,some words may add sound and rhythm to the poem.
Messages can be delivered perfectly clear in an almost telegraphic manner,but the piece will end up sounding more like Morse code than a poem.
Cheers
S

[Clive2]

Originally posted by sfcch:

I think that, even if not essential to the meaning,some words may add sound and rhythm to the poem.


Absolutely - and thus they justify their presence.

I am tired of reading telegraphese masquerading as poetry. I have no patience with those who eschew the use of perfectly good words like 'the', 'a', 'an', 'my', 'his' etc., thinking that alone 'compacts' their work ("Sunlight falls on handbag. Dentures fizz in glass"). IT DOESN'T! It makes it irritating. Drop some adjectives, some passive verbs, some flabby descriptive nonsense, but for Gawd's sake don't drop these important little words!

Clive
Grrrr

[Harry Rutherford]

I'm very aware of making a lot of sweeping generalisations here - for any phrase I might mention, you could construct a poem where it worked. And of course there's room for poems with a leisurely tone, or colloquial language, and phrases chosen as much for sound as meaning. Looking at a poem just in terms of meaning misses most of the point.

But looking at the line I picked out from your poem -

On top of it all, a malcontent sky served notice that the wind might change at any time.

the interesting bit (malcontent sky, and the wind changing) seems to me to be killed stone dead by being sandwiched between 'on top of it all' and 'at any time'. It's clumsy and wordy even as prose, but as poetry it forms a damn great flat bit - more doldrum than storm.


And the malcontent sky warned that the wind might change.

Strikes me as being better, not because the word-count is less, but because it reads as tauter, and it sounds better to my ear.

If where I've said 'wordy', you think of it as 'flabby', does that make it any clearer? The line is carrying dead weight.

As ever, this is of course just my opinion.

Harry

[This message has been edited by Harry Rutherford (edited 06-08-2002).]

[sfcch]

Thanks Clive and Harry for coming back.
Just to clarify something: even though the discussion with Harry began as a result of a poem that I posted, my opinion about the number of words is being expressed in general terms.I enjoy short and concise poems much the same way I do longer and wordier ones. What I do not like are poems in which sound,rhythm and clarity are sacrificed for the sake of brevity and because of the preoccupation with "not being obvious".
I think that decapitated,and word-puzzle type of poems are irritating.
It is not fun to stumble on almost every word or line and try to guess its meaning.Certain aspects of the message in a poem should be left for the reader to interpret,but the message itself should be clear.Sometimes I see some crits saying to the author:" I liked your poem,but I do not know what you mean by this or that" If knowing those parts was essential to understanding the message,then I don't see how the crit could have liked the poem.If it wasn't essential,then why bring it up?After all,"poetry is the supreme fiction,madame". I guess some people may like a poem for nothing else but the sonics.I respect their opinion but, personally,I think this type of poetry sucks.
Regards:
S




[This message has been edited by sfcch (edited 06-08-2002).]

[gecian]

I guess some people may like a poem for nothing else but the sonics.I respect their opinion but, personally,I think this type of poetry sucks.
Regards:
S

I agree entirely.

[Urizen]

Originally posted by gecian:
I guess some people may like a poem for nothing else but the sonics.I respect their opinion but, personally,I think this type of poetry sucks.
Regards:
S

I agree entirely.

I can't see how one can "entirely agree" with a statement as vague as that. Exactly what "type of poetry" are we talking about? Nonsense verse? Poetry with strong sonics which is poor in content? Poetry with strong sonics which is difficult in content? Poetry with strong sonics which is ordinary in content? Poetry which people respond to primarily for the sonics?

Which type of poetry is it that sucks?
I'd find the statement easier to understand if sfcch wrote, "Personally, I think this type of attitude towards or taste in poetry sucks." Even then, I might not agree with it, but I'd understand it.

Bill



[This message has been edited by Urizen (edited 06-09-2002).]

[Harry Rutherford]

I wouldn't generally enthuse about poetry that depends mostly on sonics to get past the obscurity of the meaning, but I wouldn't want to rule it out -

'Garlic and sapphires in the mud
clot the bedded axle-tree'

is one of the most memorable bits of poetry I've read. I don't know what it means though.

[gecian]

What sort of poetry?

"Nonsense verse?"
I don't think Carroll's etc primary merit is sonic.

"Poetry with strong sonics which is poor in content?"
Yes.

"Poetry with strong sonics which is difficult in content?"
No, as long as the content per se is good.

"Poetry with strong sonics which is ordinary in content?"
Yes.

"Poetry which people respond to primarily for the sonics?"
Yes.

As a reader, I distinctly prefer poetry with original meaning + poor sonics to that with good sonics + ordinary meaning.

As for the Eliot -- I don't think that's merely sound; it's sound plus image plus atmosphere. Which, of course, is an entirely different matter. And the content is far from "meaningless" -- Eliot writes quite clearly that, garlic and sapphires, located in the mud, clot an axle-tree that happens to be bedded. I don't know what the connection is, but I'm quite sure there is one.

(According to James Fenton, a "trilling wire" is a telegram sent to Lionel Trilling.)

[This message has been edited by gecian (edited 06-09-2002).]