Modifiers/Noun-Adjective pairings

[Urizen]

I looked through the blurbs and didn't locate anything specifically dealing with modifiers or noun-adjective pairings, so I thought I would bring the subject up here, in the hope of hearing some comments by some of our more experienced and learned members.

I was recently criticized for using too many noun-adjective pairings. I also noticed a poem in the Mansion which received the same criticism, so the subject is a bit on my mind, and is on my mind now while I write, and I feel it's changing the way I approach the task of writing poetry.

In poets like Milton and Tennyson, just to name two giants, noun-adjective pairings are all through the work, but not in a way that I find annoying, or in a way that I think detracts from the value of the work, or from my enjoyment of it. Here's an example, from Tennyson:

The broken sheds looked sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

And from Milton:

Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat'ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.


To my ear, both examples sound like excellent poetry. Could these exerpts be improved by pruning the adjectives? Are the adjectives distracting, and if so, why?

Is using modifiers and adjective-noun pairings seen as a kind of padding? Obviously, in some very poor verse, that is very often the case. I can easily understand criticizing a poet for over-doing it, or for doing it very badly, ie: "The little black soft kitten sat on the fluffy warm white blanket..."

It seems to me that very often a noun will cry out for an adjective, something to make the image you're trying to convey clearer, sharper. At the same time, I have done some re-writes of some of my pieces and, after some trimming and pruning, can actually see some improvement. Or maybe I'm imagining it.

I understand that the critters aren't saying "NO adjective-noun pairings!!". I understand that a problem arises only when there are (considered to be) too many too close together.

What I really want to know is: if these noun-adjective pairings/modifiers are not too, too overdone, are not cliched, are not redundant or totally uncreative or unimaginative, and if they can serve to increase the readers ability to grasp an image, then where's the harm?


Bill

[debi z]

Hi Bill,

Ahhh...a subject near and dear to my heart. Of all the crits labeled at my stuff, I think I hear this the most often and deservedly so. But I do often find myself getting stubborn about it in revision because though I know it can be over-done and that I am guilty of over-doing it,
I also believe that there is a grey area that is very much a matter of what you like compared to what the next person likes. Read it aloud. The pieces you offered read well in my opinion. The bad example you gave reads badly. Finer minds will show up and clarify I'm sure.

debi

[Howard Miller]

1. As you mention, one reason for discouraging adjective/noun pairings is the extreme overuse of adjectives by beginning poets.

2. A second reason is that in stylistic terms contemporary poetry aims at a leaner linguistic usage, and adjectives often are unnecessary tonnage.

3. A third reason is that current usage also seems to aim at frequent use of participles rather than standard adjectives. Participles are forms of verbs which act as adjectives but, because they are derived from verbs, describe actions as opposed to static qualities. Look at Heaney's "The Haw Lantern" (standard adjectives in italics, participles in bold):

The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.

But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes
with his lantern, seeking just one man;
so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw
he holds up at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,
its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,
its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.


Also notice how many nouns here have no modifiers of any sort.

Additional note: There are several participial phrases here as well which I didn't mark as the original question was about two-word adjective/noun pairings. They also function as dynamic adjective phrases.

Howard

[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 07-18-2002).]

[gecian]

As with abstractions, participles and everything else, there isn't a hard-and-fast rule. When Adj + N is used very skilfully, the adjectives feel natural and essential; when it isn't, the adjectives feel forced and fillerish. And, as Howard said, fashions are changing somewhat and this sort of thing looks stranger in modern verse.

It's always been a bad idea to imitate Milton / Tennyson -- with their remarkable sonic abilities, they carried off many stunts that it would be rash for lesser writers to attempt.

[Dunc]

I've just whipped out my Norton and made the following utterly unscientific survey of various poets by more or less randomly choosing two lots of 14 lines from each of them. (Present and past participles counted when placed adjectivally.)

Chaucer (first 14 lines of the General Prologue):
93 words, 7 adjectives (all next to their nouns), ratio of adjectives to total words .075.
Ditto Pardoner's Prologue:
118 words, 7 adjectives (6 next to noun), .059

Shakespeare:
(Sonnet 18): 114, 9 (6), .079
(Sonnet 65): 112, 14 (11), .125

Donne:
(1st 14L of The Sun Rising): 97, 12 (10), .124
(1st 14L of St Lucy's Day): 104, 9 (9), .087

Wordsworth:
(1st 14L of Tintern Abbey): 107, 19 (18), .178
(Westminster Bridge): 109, 14 (7), .128

Shelley:
(Ozymandias): 112, 13 (11), .116
(1st 14L of The Cloud): 99, 8 (8), .081

Keats:
(Chapman's Homer): 111, 12 (10), .108
(1st 14L of Eve of St Agnes): 111, 19 (14), .171

Tennyson:
(1st 14L of The Lotos Eaters): 112, 13 (12), .106
(1st 14L of Tithonus): 105, 11 (10), .105

Eliot:
(1st 14L of Prufrock): 86, 10 (10), .116
(1st 14L of Waste Land): 98, 11 (10), .112

Ted Hughes:
(Relic): 112, 3 (1), .027
(1st 14L of Walt): 105, 2 (2), .019

Heaney:
(The Forge): 107, 11 (8), .103
(1st 14L of Casting and Gathering): 108, 12 (7), .111

So you can plan your adjectives spare like Ted (.019) or Geoffrey (.059) or lush like John K (.171) or William W (.178). But make sure you do it with the same quality. Regards / Dunc

[Urizen]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Thanks to Howard especially for the bit on participles. Always enlightening.

I've been doing some reading, of both modern and older poets, and, as Dunc's survey illustrates, some poets seem to rely more heavily on adjectives than others, but I can't honestly say that I prefer one "style" to another.

And, I suppose when you can write like this...

WHO GOES WITH FERGUS?

Who will drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

Yeats


...you can do whatever you damn well please.

My name is Bill, and I am a Pffaholic.

[Harry Rutherford]

On the other hand, still on Yeats, I'd suggest that this was a rather greater poem, and notice the spareness of adjectives -


High Talk

Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.

Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, make but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon his timber toes,
Because women in the upper stories demand a face at the pane,
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to chisel and plane.

Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild,
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child.

All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose
Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose;
I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.

[Ted]

Ah, one of the first poems I ever read.

"piebald ponies" and "barnacle goose" still make me wimper at my own ineptitude.

Ted

[Dunc]

Yeats:
(Who goes with Fergus): 77, 13 (13), .169
(High Talk): 162, 15 (13), .093

[Urizen]

Good poem, Harry, but I still prefer "Who Goes With Fergus?"

I am certainly not trying to suggest that poems with lots of adjectives/modifiers are better than those with less, nor am I saying that I liked the snippets I posted because of their adjectives/modifiers.

What I want to say is that whether or not I like a poem will more than likely have nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of adj/mods it uses. The only time adj/mods will bother me is if they are cliched, redundant, or excessive, OR, as gecian mentioned above, if they appear in a metrical piece and seem to be there primarily as filler.


Bill

------------------
Beside this thoroughfare
The sale of half-hose has
Long since superseded the cultivation
Of Pierian roses.

E. Pound

[Harry Rutherford]

I was really just taking the opportunity of sharing a poem which I think is startlingly under-anthologised, though I do prefer it to the other Yeats one.

I do think that 'Beware adjectives!' is fairly good general advice, though, just because it's easy to get into a mindset where 'ginger cat' is obviously better than 'cat' because it's more exact.
Every time you put down a word, you want to make it more precise; and in practice, that's not necessarily a good idea, both because adjectives are generally 'weaker' than nouns and verbs, and because it isn't necessarily important what colour the cat is - the reader will come up with some colour in their head anyway.

I just think it's easy to over-use them.

Harry

[Scavella]

Good thread, Bill.

Mine was the piece in the Mansion that got the criticism, and I fully expected it. It was an old piece, pre-PFFA, and my reason for posting it was mixed. On the one hand, it was a metric piece (which is rare for me these days) and it was satire, and so it fit the challenge. On the other hand, it was pretty heavily overmodified. I wanted to find out if it worked nevertheless. It didn't.

What I really appreciate, though, is your posting of instances where the pairings do work and your beginning a discussion of what's acceptable and what isn't. Perhaps because of my own tendency to throw adjectives around, I tend to be harsh on adjective-noun pairings in critiquing, and it's great to have a thread where reasons are given for their working or failing.

Thanks

Scavella

[Etain Homme]

Oh Please, Moderators and powers that be, make a permanent link, highly visible to this. This very moment I can assure you that there are thousands upon thousands of college students, lost in the abyss of homework from a course titled "Poetry and Drama, Eng. Lit011" that need this. This, by far, is one of the best discussions I have ever come across on this subject. I want to cheer, and find a way to direct those lost thousands to this spot. Not only for this info, but to show them what can be gained / created by cooperation and open dialog between like-minded persons.

Congratulations & Well Done!! http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/biggrin.gif





[This message has been edited by Etain Homme (edited 07-19-2002).]

[gecian]

I agree with Harry about "High Talk": it's one of my favourite Yeats. Fergus isn't quite as nice, though I do like S2, in which the adjectives are very well chosen --

"the brazen cars"
"the white breast of the dim sea"
"all dishevelled wandering stars"

There's a place for lushness and a place for spareness in poetry, I suppose.

(Is "High Talk" a sonnet, by the way? It's fourteen lines long and metrical and rhyming. Andrea345, are you there?)

[Urizen]

I guess I'm out-voted on the Fergus poem! That little poem is dear to me because it's one of the ones that made me fall in love with poetry in the first place. I did notice that "High Talk" is included in Yeats' Collected Poems (ed. Richard Finneran). Odd thing is, I never paid much attention to it. And it's true, I don't think I've seen that poem anthologized, and I've got anthologies stacked to the ceiling, as I'm an avid collector. It is a good poem, but then, as I mentioned before, I don't think Yeats really knew how to write a bad one.

And, Harry, I appreciate your point about letting the reader use his/her imagination a bit. You're right.

Scavella, I liked your poem in the Mansion. I am glad to hear your thoughts about this subject.

I will be watching my modifiers from here on in, and I am hopeful that my stuff will benefit from it.

gecian, interesting question about "High Talk". As far as I know, Yeats wrote very very few sonnets. In fact, I can't think of a single sonnet of his. Odd for such a die-hard formalist to avoid that ubiquitous little bugger. My vote is no, a sonnet it ain't. But what the hell do I know?

And where is Andrea?

**Before I forget, thank you Gabriel for your eye-opening crit on my over-modified (and otherwise non-functioning) poem in Merciless.

Bill

[This message has been edited by Urizen (edited 07-20-2002).]

[Harry Rutherford]

Originally posted by Urizen:
As far as I know, Yeats wrote very very few sonnets. In fact, I can't think of a single sonnet of his. Odd for such a die-hard formalist to avoid that ubiquitous little bugger. My vote is no, a sonnet it ain't. But what the hell do I know?

Well, the poem that started the whole 'What is a sonnet' threads now enshrined in Blurbs was a Yeats sonnet - Leda and the Swan.

As for High Talk - I'm not generally inclined to say that a poem in couplets is a sonnet just because it has 14 lines rather than 12 or 16. Though it does have rather a good example of a volta. Guess I'll have to get out the old ouija board, and ask the man himself. Though he personally favoured automatic writing, I believe.

Harry

[Urizen]

Damn, I forgot about "Leda". You're right, Harry.

Bill

**Found three other sonnets in the Collected Poems:

"The Folly Of Being Comforted"
"At The Abbey Theatre"
"Meru", (part XII of "Supernatural Songs")

Bill
feeling stupid

[This message has been edited by Urizen (edited 07-20-2002).]