War of the Worlds of Words: a casual look at prose and poetry.
“The lumbering mechanical giant plodded through the woods towards Lake Michigan. The
snapping of tree trunks terrorized already hysterical townsfolk even before the alien
leviathan came into the clearing. As it approached the artillery hiding in the brush near the
beach, the military men made ready. The crowd had been cautioned to stay still so as not
to give away their position.
But as soon as the Martian was in sight, the civilians began to scream and flee. Many
people ran through the sand and entered the lake at a full run, splashing wildly until they
fell, drawing the attention of the aliens. The turret atop the mechanical beast turned and
the air filled with that unholy whine as the dreaded red ray of light swept through the
green, frothy water washing up on the shore, disintegrating anything in its path. Shrieks of
terror abruptly stopped and only steam rose from water that seconds before held a
thrashing young woman.
His fury fueled by those that died.
“Fire!” a rasping sergeant cried.
Ba boom ba boom ba boom ba boom.
They fought while facing certain doom.
On and on the brave men fired the battery of artillery into the belly of that beast—
knowing any moment the red ray would turn their way and they would join the ranks of
those already claimed by this mechanical horror. Still, the sergeant ordered the platoon to
hold their position so as many townsfolk as possible could escape during the barrage.
That was when the whining of ray stopped. For a moment the giant metal tripod stood
silent, then one leg bent and the entire contraption let our a deafening creak of metal
against metal and toppled over itself clattering and clanging until it hit the mud with a loud
splat and a force that rained mud upon everything within a hundred yards!
There was silence for a time as everyone stared at what now seemed only a colossal
heap of metal. But as the company of soldiers gave out a victorious cheer, the first they
had known since the aliens had attacked, people began coming out from behind the
brush, and crawling and stumbling out of the shallow water to the shore. Men, women
and children, faces covered in scratches and mud or their soaking wet clothes clinging to
shivering frames. There was limping and bleeding, but soon they too began cheering and
some even dancing as for the first time since it began, there was hope for the defeat of
the invaders.”
Before we begin our discussion of prose and poetry I want to make one thing clear. We
are beginners and intermediates; we are here to help each other. We are not here to
eviscerate innocent human beings who have expressed an interest prose and poetry. I
have heard unbelievably ruthless, arrogant comments from people about writers that they
feel have not reached their own levels of expertise—although, I find it interesting that the
more genuinely accomplished the writer of prose or poetry, the less he or she feels the
need to bash beginners.
Whatever the pinochles of perfection and profundity in prose or the pleasantries and
epiphanies of poetry that you may have achieved in those three lecture hours at your
college “Intro to Literature” course, if you find this site unbearably beneath you, please
exercise your right to find another site where your vitriol will be met with those equally
aghast at our ineptitude. We shall endeavor to somehow muddle along without you.
If you are still with me, we are here to learn and try to have fun. For example, the little
iambic tetrameter verse I included in the scene was designed to be obvious meter and
easily scanned, hence line three. Line two is a variant to demonstrate that a formal meter
usually varies, especially today, to keep the multitudes of sophisticates from dozing off.
I know there is a long standing debate about free verse and metered poetry. But many
people barely understand what “meter” is in a poem. They may have not read enough
poetry to find metered verse monotonous. If writing metered verse in iambic tetrameter
helps them develop an ear for poetry, then we need to be encouraging.
If someone is playing with meter to emulate some beloved poet of the past or to see how
it works or even if they enjoy writing metered verse then that is a positive thing—much
better than the apathy that most people feel. There is no need to involve us all in some
esoteric debate that most people will not understand and is far more destructive than
constructive.
The last thing a new poet needs after completing a metered poem that was fun for him or
her to write and probably taught that poet a lot and got them thinking about whether or
not they want to use meter, is for someone to tell them, in the terminology of every
pompous twit that takes pleasure in deflating blossoming writers, is that their effort is
“Sing Song and vapid.”
First, the world loved accentual meter for centuries and its lack of merit today is only
opinion. I happen to love accentual meter, often the further in the past it was written the
more I enjoy it, if only for the historical lessons. Moreover, I think meter and rhyme
sometimes echo too loudly in an empty head. If today's "elite" knew how to listen and not
just skim to see where a poem fits in their theories and agendas, they might not hear the
rhyme and rhythm so loudly. Perhaps a little focus on what the artist is actually saying--
the content--might prevent other elements from overwhelming them.
For many of us, meter and rhyme has always been satisfying and fun. It’s been said that
versification is to prose as walking is to dancing. I see that as so. If you are someone
who likes to write in meter, don’t let the poet police of today keep you from dancing to
the poems of yesterday or from writing verse yourself that can make someone’s mind
dance. It can be a great gift to give someone who has not been told yet that he or she is
not allowed to enjoy the dance. Besides, someday poetry may again be free for all of us
to enjoy, not just an insufferable few in academia.
Moreover, for you experts who persist in denigrating we who like meter, I think Whitman,
the prince of free verse, was bombastic, self-involved gas bag--as are so many of his
adherents today. Still, I would not denigrate a new poet who writes in free verse. I know
that thousands of accomplished poets write free verse, and can write in either formal or
free or both or something else, depending upon what’s best for the poem and the
audience. I respect their right and their preference and, who knows, two years from now
it may be my favorite form. People evolve; poets evolve. That is unless some pretentious
phoney gets under their skin and drives them away from the pursuit.
Second, no one starts at the top. Give people a chance to play with this art before you
demand they write the perfectly formed, balanced, deep, serious prose and poetry you
think you are writing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to discourage professionals from
helping a writer who is making a mistake. If you are an advanced reader or writer and
have constructive critique, we are lucky to have you and would love to hear it. I’m just
asking that if what you have to say is negative, try to remember some people are actually
closely listening to you. Try to have a little mercy.
I spent decades trying to stop associating the subject of literature with the UWM English
Department and trying to get the voices of a few arrogant, angry women out of my mind.
I know now that these “writers” were not examples of strong female leaders in the field.
They were shallow, cowardly women who pretended to be something they were not—
accomplished writers. I also know now that these insensitive, self-serving and greedy
people were paid for something they didn’t do—teach composition. Unfortunately, I did
not know that at the time and listened intently to what these “teachers” said.
Obviously, there are many outstanding female writers and teachers, but having a vagina
is not a valid prerequisite for teaching literature or assuming leadership positions in
college English Departments. At least it never has been until now. The down side of the
new academic focus on pigmentation and genitalia is that--in the name of progress—
incompetent administrators at UWM betrayed the public trust and handed the positions
over to empty-headed mind molesters and soul butchers like those who run the UWM
English Department.
Consequently, the women, as well as the men, who actually are writers and teachers end
up waiting tables or mixing concrete while these criminals in academia go on defrauding
the public, advancing hidden agendas while pretending to be teachers.
Another consequent is the pathetic ranking of our students world-wide and the lack of
recognition of American writers by the world literary community. Outside of the United
States, literary recognition can not be gained by the usual strong arm tactics of our cheap
academic thugs. Of course, cheap is their relative value, their costs to the taxpayers is
anything but cheap and their cost to all of us in lost artists is immeasurable. To me, there
is nothing lower than a teacher who deliberately demoralizes or undermines her or his
student for personal reasons or political ends.
Chapter two
I would like you to reread this scene I rewrote from War of the Worlds. Since the plot is
familiar to most of us either through books, television, movies or even tapes, think more
about the sounds of the words and not so much the content of the scene or the meaning
of he words.
As a hint, you should pay attention to assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds like “too
and soon” or “scream and flee” (sometimes combined vowels combined with other letters
have the same sound) and consonance the repetition of consonant sounds like the
repeating “t” in “battery and artillery.” Also, watch for a special kind of consonance called
alliteration which is the repeating of the first consonant such as in “belly and beast.”
Finally, pay attention to onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they represent such
as “spat.” You don’t have to come to any conclusions or memorize anything, just notice
the combinations of the sounds when they come up.
When you are paying attention to the sounds of letters, listen to vowels and think of the
musical concept of “pitch.” Say “boom, tweet” several times, for example, and you will
notice that “oo” sounds low on the scale and “ee” sounds high on the scale. In fact, there
is a kind of scale that you can use to make your poetry interesting. It is not necessary to
understand it perfectly immediately. Just know it exists. The long “o” and “u” sounds tend
to be low and the long “a, e and i” tend to be high. The short vowels sounds are in the
middle. Listen and you will find their place.
Reread the scene, remember, there’s no test just notice sounds a little more than usual.
Chapter Three
I suppose I must insert my standard disclaimer when I write prose or poetry or about it:
This is not for someone who is already a literary scholar or even an advanced reader of
American and English Literature. It is for those of us who simply enjoy reading and would
like a better understanding of the oft acclaimed literary arts--perhaps might even enjoy
playing with and exercising our own creativity with pen and paper or keyboard and
computer. Painting was not limited to Picasso; Baseball was not limited to Babe Ruth;
attacking villages was not limited to Attila; pondering to Plato; cooking to Kerr; sonnets to
Shakespeare; murder to Machiavelli; kissing to Kate; well, you know what I’m saying—
you don’t have to be a pro to give it a go.
Perhaps, like me, you have had good and bad experiences with the “academic elite.” Or
maybe you have found books by practiced poets hard to understand. I like reading books
by good poets. Most try hard to be sensitive to beginners if beginners are their audience.
But to many of us they are sometimes like computer nerds to baby boomers—they come
from somewhere many of us have never been and even the terms are undefined and
difficult for us to understand.
I am not going to construct a “text book” here, listing terms then defining them or listing
concepts then writing a chapter on each. There are great dictionaries of terms in prose
and/or poetry, and an abundance of introductory texts by brilliant scholars who are far
better resources than I if you are willing and able to just sit and study books on poetry.
That’s not false modesty. It’s fact. But, I love this stuff and I want to share some of that
with you.
I’m going to just write about poetry and prose. I’ll throw in a few small narratives that use
the elements we talk about, perhaps a few lines of verse to make a point. Certainly I will
try to cue what is in chapter in its heading, but the frame work will be to write about what
I think of as I am writing, as if we were just talking about poetry and prose.
Often I recall things people have told me they’re confused about-again, not literary critics
or academics, just average people curious about the topic. Many people are not even
sure what constitutes literature.
To me, the literature of a culture can be said to be the inner life its people written in an
especially beautiful or meaningful way. It reflects the ideals and accomplishments of a
culture as well as its failures. Although, today we see a lot more focus on our culture’s
failures than anything else. But there is an abundance of beauty and inspiration in our
Western Literature and it is your heritage if you are part of the culture—regardless of
who you are or where you came from, your social or legal status, if you are here and a
human, the writers were invariably talking to you.
As the visual media becomes more and more adept at capturing our attention, there are
fewer and fewer readers, particularly readers of the classics, out there. But I really would
enjoy sharing some of what I love to read and what I hear when I read, with interested
readers; if I have any interested readers. You and I could be the only people making this
journey. And you may exist only in my mind. Regardless, you, imaginary or not, and I are
important enough to justify this effort.
Chapter Four
I do have some small advantage over the average reader. The B.A. in “Journalism” from
the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee helps a little, but, I did not attend high school or
college until my mid thirties.
However, as a child, I lived with my grand mother and she loved English and American
Literature. Her house was filled with books. Her book shelves filled with the classics. I
recall her and I would each alternately choose a book to read a chapter from to each
other every night.
I was reading her choice to her one night: Anne of Green Gables which I thought I would
hate because it was a “girl’s book.” I became so enthralled with the book that I begged to
read it every night until we were done. After that we turned to my choice, which was
Gulliver’s Travels. We both enjoyed that book just as much.
In retrospect, I took for granted this amazing woman and the wonderful, rich childhood
she provided me, despite the poverty and dysfunction of my nuclear family. Because of
her, I was spared great, great pain and, although I knew we never had any money, I
never felt poor and seldom unhappy.
Her house would probably have been condemned as a fire hazard should any government
ghoul have peeked in the window. Books were everywhere. She used stacks of them as
tables and door stops and furniture legs and as platforms upon which to place plants or
to ripen fruit near a window sill, a window sill already hidden beneath or behind rocks or
plants or drift wood or any bit of what she called ‘natural art.’. She even used books to
keep books open to the correct page and paragraph on any of the dozens of books she
might be reading at any given time.
I spent many wonderful hours as a boy immersed in Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher.
Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, James Fennimore Cooper, O’ Henry, Longfellow, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and so many, many more. I laughed at the sounds of
poetry read by my grandmother at my cradle. Or later poems we read to each other that
made us laugh or cry or gasp. Poems like The Little Ghost published in a 1917 book of
poems by one of her favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, still stir something within me
because I so closely associate it with this woman I loved so deeply:
The Little Ghost
I KNEW her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high -- higher than most --
And the green gate was locked.
And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone --
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.
By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.
I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do -- and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!
She bent above my favourite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled -- there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.
She held her gown on either side
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go.
And where the wall is built in new
And is of ivy bare
She paused -- then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
I know why I love this poem. After working in my grandmother’s garden she would read
me a poem like this related to gardening. She made the poem seem so real to me that if I
didn’t know better, I would swear I recall seeing this ghost in her garden and that I KNEW
the ghost as well as the persona of the poem.
Chapter Five
My grandmother would do that with anything and make any poetry or literature seem that
much more real just by relating it to whatever activity we had been doing that day--
gardening or walking on the shores of nearby Lake Michigan or even something as simple
as a walk thru the woods would become something special when we would stop for lunch
and she began to read:
When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.
Stephen Vincent Benet.
This poem so delighted me that I was soon given, and I still possess to this day, three
copies of Western Star, an unfinished book, written mostly in verse, by Pulitzer prize
winning author, Stephen Vincent Benet about the settling of the American West.
It was not, however, the literal meaning of this poem that gave me pleasure. There was
something in the sound of the poem. As a boy, I barely understood it. It was the same
thing that often made me laugh when I was a toddler in my crib and knew little of the
meaning of any poem’s words. It was the musical sounds of the poem. The first line of
this poem contains the well known poetic device we mentioned called alliteration.
Alliteration is the repeat of the first consonant in words. Here it is “Boone” and “bye.” In
this instance, the poem is short and “burning” in line four is also meant to echo the
alliteration in the first line.
In line three there is consonance. That is also the repetition of a consonant sound as the
“l” in “all” and “lost” and “wild.” But here, of course, the sounds are not only at the
beginning of the word. Alliteration and consonance have played bigger roles in poetry of
the past than today, but to my mind there are no rules and if you want to use them, use
them, especially if you are just beginning to play with words. Just take care it does not
begin to sound silly, unless, of course, you are going for a silly sound such as this
childhood ditty:
“Great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts.
Mutated monkey meat.
Half eaten hippo hearts.
Only trouble was I had no bowl and spoon.”
.
Many poets feel the consonants provide our reference for the word. You can usually
understand a sentence without a, e, i, o and u.. e.g. Grt grn gbs grsy grmy gphr gts.
But some say the spirit of a poem is assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds. The
vowels provide the pitch. The low end of the scale is the oo sound as in “boom, boom,
boom.” The high end would be the ee sound as in “tweet, tweet,tweet.” If you say them
aloud, you will hear the low sound of the “boom” and high sound of the “tweet” without
having to impose a pitch on it. It just occurs naturally in speech, but, you have to listen.
Remember it is the sounds not the visual image of the vowels we are talking about now.
The “u” in “Thud” would be lower pitch than the “u” in buy, because the sound changes to
the long “I” sound of the “y.”
We have all heard the admonition “i” before “e” except after “c” or when it sounds like “a”
as in “neighbor” and “weigh.” Dipthongs like “ei” or the “ai” in mail or the “oi” in boil or
(speaking of “sound”) the “ou” in sound, are very common in English. If you listen, you will
begin to here this melody everywhere, but if you would like a scale as a guide, check out
Western Wing: an introduction to poetry by Nims. Low to high here is a scale:
oo o oo aw oi ow ah u u(r)
too cone cook saw toy cow far thud curd
a e i i a ee
hat net kit kite weigh tweet .
Remember it is usually the sound you are listening for, not looking for the visual
appearance of the letter.
Chapter
Listening in spite of academic rhetoric.
Of course, all the letters have sounds, consonants included, so if you listen to them, you
will begin to see how they work in the tone or subject of the poem; how the “l” and “r” in
“lazy river” flows. Or the sound of escaping air in “f” or “s” or “ch” or “sh” or “th.” There
are percussion sounds like “d, p,t, and d.” This is not to say you have to use anything
here. But you will be a better writer if you listen to the sounds as well as the meanings.
These sounds often show up in onomatopoeia. Everybody likes words that sound like
what they represent. “boom,” “ding, dong,” “Plop,” to name a few.
And through all these nearly sixty years since my grandmother read into my cradle, I have
periodically found comfort and pleasure in the sights and sounds of poetry and verse.
Especially when I come across something my grandmother and I enjoyed together. On
those occasions an already satisfying experience will take on that additional meaning. As
I write this I can hear her voice reading that poem and feel her happiness and her love of
the poetry and for me. It is a huge gift I wish for you. No matter what age you are, you
can usually find someone who also loves poetry and is willing to read with you.
Chapter Six
Throughout my life I have a developed a habit of walking and reading. It is probably as
annoying to some as today’s walkman radios are to me. That’s because the listener
(even in written form the key to enjoying poetry or prose, is listening.) is not really paying
attention to those about him as he listens to his Walkman or if he is reading he listens to
whatever it is he is reading. But, again, listening is the key to this all; you must listen.
Incidentally, a sub theme of this essay would be to stop interfering with your own ability
to listen and learn and savor and enjoy the written word. Don’t become impatient or
offended every time some author is not up on, or interested in, the latest in-vogue,
politically correct rule that some ivy league deconstructionist has mandated we all must
obey.
Let yourself enjoy what you enjoy. People loved verse for years, before the academics
started telling us we were stupid if we did. Don’t listen to that. It could be that some day
you will feel that way. You will just naturally get tired of one thing and want to listen to
poetry that has a more variety or less structure. But let that be your decision when you
are ready; don’t force yourself to dislike something just because someone told you’re not
supposed to like what the author has written.
I am familiar enough with academia to know many of these soul-butchers do exist in today’
s universities. I am absolutely certain of this: Most ivy-league or secular university
Literature departments are infested with pretentious, self-serving iconoclasts, some as
ignorant as they are arrogant. There anger is a psychological contaminant and you will be
better served by listening and trying to understand your readings of past scholars and
thinkers, than by some knee-jerk socialist reaction to a remark or word that is politically
incorrect or inconsistent with your professor’s pet theories. These idiots don’t care about
you. It is all about denying you the truth, teaching socialism and transferring power.
Some of these “teachers” are guilty of such molestation of the human mind that they
should be criminally prosecuted. Until this errant “faculty” can be reclaimed or eliminated
from the literary landscape, the best thing you can do for yourself when trapped in one of
these “institutions of lower learning” is learn how to filter what they say with what you
think.
I know your position as a student is tenuous because they abuse their power. You must
feed these professors whatever socialist tripe they enjoy, but please don’t believe for a
moment their oft-repeated refrain that all the beauty of Western art and literature that
came before the prose and poetry of deconstructionist propaganda is not valid.
Many of these amoral savages in today’s “literary community” stomp through Western
Literature like cows in a garden, chewing up flowers and beauty and giving us nothing but
their socialist shit it return. These people are more sociopathic than socialistic.
The literature of a culture is not only what is some have suffered and what is wrong with
it, but also what is noble and great in that culture—including Western culture. Most
important for you to remember is that your inner life is as important to literature as that
communist professor—perhaps even more so since it will probably be less filled with
hidden agendas and social engineering and more filled with truth and sincerity. That is
more important than anything these arrogant mind molesters at the university have to say
to you or any of the tripe they write.
Our inner life as a people is as many and varied as there are people and as much multi
faceted as each of those people. What is amazing about literature is, by definition, no
single perspective is less valid than any other. It’s just different and there a lot to be
learned from all of what is written, especially if it is beautiful as well. Don’t let them
convince you otherwise by calling the masters “old-fashioned” or those who refer to any
contemporary writings that disagree with them as “hate speech.”
Most secular academics are arrogant thugs with hidden agendas who don’t care what
they say or do to you if they believe it will help achieve their own political ends. They are
propagandists not educators. Try to see through their communist and socialist agendas
and write truth, at least in things you do not have to submit to them for a grade. The truth
will ultimately be recognized and rise to the top so long as we have freedom of speech
and create that marketplace of ideas. It could well be your truth that is close to the
reality we all want to live in. The world has already seen many times it is not socialist or
communist truth that is a desirable reality for the people. Present yours any way you can.
I did have a few great teachers in college who knew that and they seemed to feel my
work was worthy of some small regard. So while most of today’s “academic giants”
would sneer at me and what I like, I think you’ll find hidden agendas in those who waste
all their time sneering at people.
I promise you if you will spend a lot less time sneering, and a lot more time learning, in
the end you will reap rewards these rabid iconoclasts can not even imagine. Fortunately
for me, I am too old to worry much about what does or does not make today’s literary
giants sneer.
Still, it is only fair to warn you that my perspective is anything but on the literary vanguard.
Your English professor may snort milk out of his nose if you try to impress him over a bag
lunch in the park.with my thoughts on poetry. Come to think of it, would today’s profound,
politically correct professors take time from their mad scramble to ride their own ethnicity
or genitalia to literary glory to talk with a student over a bag lunch in the park? I suppose
we could change that to a talk over wine, cheese and whole grain scones at the local
book-store café, but even then you would probably have to buy.
You could discuss your ideas in bed if you have had to have sex with your professor to
get him or her to give a crap about your work.. That is the strategy a young person I
recently talked with. I had hoped that kind of thing was the wishful fantasies of young
English majors and today’s academics had, at least, the integrity not to use their position
to gain sexual favors from students. But, apparently it is common in today’s universities.
Ah, the nobility of the teaching profession. But, I digress.
Chapter
I am currently rereading “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, complete and unabridged. I
am reading it because I love the style and the register and tone and the sub themes and
the settings and, you name it, I love it. Mostly, I just love being immersed in the world Mr.
Wells created in that book. It is such a genuine joy to me that I am always surprised
when someone else expresses anything but appreciation for the book. But, something
other than appreciation is what my neighbor recently expressed.
Gretchen’s home is on the lot just east of mine and her door front faces the next street
over. Our lots are separated by a line of arborvitaes. She is a charming, beautiful and
intelligent young high school teacher married to an equally pleasant young attorney. My
wife often sees her as they work in their respective gardens. I seldom see her, but,
yesterday I bumped into her on my afternoon walk. She bid me a good afternoon then
recognized me as her neighbor and stopped to chat.
She saw I was reading War of the Worlds. To my surprise she said that it was heavy
reading. I told her that just the contrary was so, that while the language and style is, of
course, nineteenth century, the story itself is simply a Science fiction invasion classic and
not cerebral at all.
In fact, I was reading it for need of that simplicity of plot and theme. I had been lately
absorbed in readings that addressed the theological and political future of the world and
the unavoidable victory of tyrannical socialist and communist governments over the United
States and, consequently, the end of the concept of “free nations.”
I suppose you could impose a metaphor of communist conquest on the novel, but I doubt
Mr. Wells had any such intent. The outlook for the United States today seems so bleak
that I began reading War of the Worlds simply to escape my own melancholy. I knew in
that fictional world, at least, the invasion fails.
I also noticed something else: I’m up to chapter sixteen and I realized I have had a
wonderful time reading the book despite that it is only in the last few chapters that, by
today’s standards, some serious action has occurred. Again, it just takes a little patience.
I am so tired of reading or hearing even well-intentioned academics berate great writers
of the past as verbose, blusterous or as bombastic and their styles as grandiloquent and
anachronistic. These academics need to just shut up and read. Learn to listen.
Perhaps they might actually learn something themselves, other that how to denigrate the
men and woman of antiquity who have bequeathed to us the miracle that is Western
civilization—the miracle that they have squandered and now seek to destroy. Our cultural
heritage is staggeringly beautiful, but sometimes a reader has to make an effort.
Sometimes a reader has to give themselves a little time to adjust to the author’s style.
Just as you might take the time to understand someone from another culture in our time;
take the time to understand a writer from this culture but from an earlier time. Are we so
sure that what contemporary writers have to say is more rewarding, insightful and
relevant?
Find the things within the classic text you are reading that are interesting—the images are
always a treat or the intellectual processes of the author or the historical or cultural
information to be gleaned or even the fashions or technology of the time, can all be
revealed by a careful writer like Wells. Meanwhile the human mind gets the time it needs
to build new paths to enlightenment and you learn about another time.
Where would we be if anyone who didn’t understand a poem or story at first reading
dismissed it as not worth the time? Actually, today, that’s just what they do; so, I
suppose we would be exactly where we are: in a country that is throwing away the
greatest governing system a people have ever known, where academia is filled with
cheap criminals using students as pawns to achieve power and a leadership that is bullied
by the iconoclastic dolts to lazy and corrupt to earn what they want, as so void of
principle or decency that they manipulate their students and abuse their position of trust
to achieve their own ends.
But these prose and poetry styles developed in a great and literate culture that the
academics have let deteriorate to the embarrassment it is today.
But, what once was considered great will become a delight if you will put your anger on
hold. Give yourself the chance to enjoy it instead of distaining something that doesn’t
conform immediately to your expectations. Learn something new. Some of us are so busy
racing through the words looking for the first head to be hacked off or breast to pop out
of a torn bodice, we miss the real beauty and intent of the writer.
I don’t have anything against heads getting hacked off, and I quite enjoy breasts popping
out of bodices, but those kinds of things are unlikely to occur in a nineteenth century
science fiction novel. Especially a novel that Wells knew would be much read and loved
by the young or the young at heart..
The intelligent, kind and personable young women, Gretchen, made an analysis of this
great book without giving herself a chance to get to know it. We have been so
indoctrinated into an impatient, critical, even cruel and antagonistic attitude towards the
literary style of the classics that we rob ourselves of the great enjoyment and intellectual
expansion we can attain through a patient listening to the works of these genuine giants
of literature from our past.
The eyes of this girl bespeak an alert and curious intellect and the conversations I have
had with her reflect her wholesome outlook. She would probably love H.G. Wells if
someone had not told her to be impatient with its language.
Chapter
There are always people who don’t like the way the world is set up and they think they
can do a better job. They believe patriarchies are unjust and they think belief in a Hebrew
and/or Christian God is harmful; they don’t like the traditional family unit and despise the
capitalistic system and many other things that they believe are sub sets of the Western
culture.
As it happens I turned to a major church after experiencing the criminality of academics at
UWM. I was active in that church for over ten years and I was a high priest in their
bishopric when I left.
My experience is the higher you go in the hierarchies of an organized religion, the more
you meet religious “leaders” that are just as corrupt as the secular “leaders.” In fact, they
are possibly even more culpable because they commit their crimes in the name of
Chrisianity.
I don’t know if there is a Judeo-Christian God. I do know organized religion has perverted
Christianity to the point that it is barely recognizable from the religion that built this country.
The judgmental, holier than thou hierarchies that see themselves as floating around
somewhere above everyone else is as repulsive to the free man as the communists. And
if a Judeo-Christian God exists, they are repulsive to Him as well.
Humility, forgiveness, concern for others—the poor, the sick, the imprisoned—charity and
peace and poverty are the values Christians are supposed to revere as they make their
way through this life. That’s why the dregs of Europe and the African slaves, under a
declaration of independence were able to bond and build the greatest country on earth.
They were daily admonished to set aside worldly things and seek to do the will of God—
put the welfare of each other before our own. Those are the principles that made us
strong. Neither the greedy capitalists or the power hungry communists reflect those
guidelines.
So what does this have to do with literature. The truth is every word you utter, every
sentence spoken or in print is influenced by the Old Testament. And every shred of
literature to this day has it as foundation the Bible. Like it or not, hate it or love it, that is
the reality.
Ironically, if they actually read more, they would know communism can be said to be a
Judeo Christian concept. In fact, everything we think is influenced by the Old Testament.
So, if you are going to understand what you are doing, you have to read the Old
Testament. Once you have done that, you might as well read the New Testament then
you will understand why we have built a world on this Western foundation. And why
America thrived before the communists arrived.
If you want the benefits of civilization, you need structure and a foundation. As
foundations go, the Western culture has produced some very humane concepts that man
did not consider before the morality of the Bible came to the world. But you have to read
it before you know that.
It is obvious that some of the most vehement critics of the Bible have never read it. It is
an infinite source of strength and comfort and pragmatic guidance if you are willing to
open your mind to it. That’s why tyrants always outlaw it. They want the people afraid
and looking to the state for guidance and protection. Unfortunately, all the state usually
provides is cold, impersonal tyranny.
Tyrants lose interest in the people that put them in power as soon as they have secured
the power. And where they deviate from the Bible in their ideas for the distribution of
wealth is CHOISE, we have our free will. The communists always want to force people
and always have to kill and hurt people for the good of the people. And, of course, they
will always decide who needs killing.
Listening to prose of the past is similar to the things we can gain by a patent listening to
poetry of the past. There are many political reasons that academics want you to leave
the beauty and nobility of Western culture in the past. For the most part they have spent
decades creating a false history and vilifying our heritage. But, they know it doesn’t take
long for anyone who is paying attention to literature to realize we are being lied to and
manipulated by the academic elite into accepting a false reality of their making in order to
overthrow the government.
Today’s academia and the literary and artistic community are involved more in the
overthrow of what they perceive as an unjust capitalistic system than in a truthful and
revealing literary or artistic effort or in teaching us about our literary heritage. Although, it
is imperative that you realize, a huge number these “revolutionaries” that hate the rich
seem to use their political power to grow rich themselves. So, it is not so much that they
hate injustice and the unfair distribution of wealth, it is that they want the wealth someone
else had acquired to be funneled into their own personal coffers.
Most of what is written today falls more in the realm of propaganda and indoctrination
than what we once called literature. As with Western religion, there is an effort to
discourage the study of Western prose or poetry of the past that does not advance the
socialist agenda. I believe those that do this are unfit to teach and should be imprisoned
not paid, I think you would feel the same way if you took the time to learn of your heritage.
While I had a few terrific teachers on college, most of the 1980s University of Wisconsin
English and Journalism departments were controlled by angry feminists that vented their
disgust and hatred for the Dead White Males and the traditional prose and poetry many
of us grew up with.
It is unconscionable to deny students access to this precious literary fortress filled with
the gold of writers past. I find these academics arrogant and despicable.
As hard as I have tried to block our the memory of these “teachers,” they linger and lurk
and slither through my mind like the poisonous water moccasins of a Floridian swamp—
hate-filled iconoclasts I once trusted and listened to intently, now deliver their venom
should I encounter them as I wade through my consciousness.
Chapter
For the most part, what I have said so far would be considered prose. Although, I
sneaked in an extemporaneous poem in iambic tetrameter so we could discuss that later.
Some might not agree with the writer, me. They might call what I’ve written so far
something a lot less polite, but most would admit it is prose none the less.
Like poetry, prose is a structure in lines. But the lines are not relevant to the affects of
the poem. Prose is read left to right and the lines continue to the end of a space then
begin again just below the last line and back at the left of the page. This pattern continues
until the end of the paragraph.
The words in the sentences represent something in the mind of the writer that presumably
is similar to something in the mind of the reader. All of the words together create a
thought which is ended with an end punctuation such as a period, (.) a question mark (?)
or exclamation mark (!). There are several other punctuation marks that help
communicate an idea or ideas within in a sentence such as a comma, semi colon, colon,
ellipses, apostrophe and quotation marks.
It is easy to find a punctuation page and become familiar with them. You can rely on
context to signal the reader but punctuation helps the reader.
I advise you to take a few minutes; write down the punctuation marks most common;
there’s only a dozen or so; if you learn one a day, in two weeks you’ll know them and can
begin to use them. It is easier on your reader and after a while they come in very handy
for a writer as well..
The use of punctuation can be emotive. Commas used to invert sentences, for example,
can make them a little more suspenseful—turn journalistic prose into poetry: Compare
these two sentences with the same words and essentially the same meaning.
Poetic style: “Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred.”
Objective journalistic style: “Six hundred rode into the valley of death.”
The same words; the same idea; but, if you “invert” the order and add punctuation, the
idea has a different affect on the reader. It’s more fun, well more fun for everyone but the
six hundred. They probably don’t care too much; any way you say it, they end up in the
valley of death.
The journalist would go on to tell us Who, what, when, where, why and how--again,
perhaps a more informative style, but less suspenseful and emotive. While the poet may
ignore the facts and focus on the futility of war or the unquestioning obedience of these
men or the courage or whatever is the poem’s theme.
I make the distinction of Journalistic style rather than just prose as opposed to poetry
because the inverted sentence is a way to make your prose more suspenseful and
exciting as well as your poetry. However, when you are trying to be as factual and clear
as a journalist you would usually be strait forward with the facts.
A fictional story or poem may or may not be factually accurate, although usually the writer
is trying to represent some kind of human truth. In that sense, I have always felt fiction
contains more truth than fact. The fiction writer does not have as much to fear as the
journalist who will often face legal threats or threats of a an illegal nature if he or she
makes someone feel threatened.
The ideas in sentences are united to support of the paragraph’s topic. The paragraphs
then combine to create the written piece. Usually, there is an introductory paragraph that
tells you the purpose of the written work. Often, it sets the tone and tells readers why the
writer feels it is worth reading and the purpose of the piece. Some people would call this
a hook. Today, the thinking is that the reader’s interest must be captured close to the
beginning no matter what you write.
But, if you have patient listeners and you have an interesting prose style with lots of
concrete words, good description and a few inverted sentences, a reader may enjoy
what you have written and trust that you are going somewhere that is worth the wait.
That is the kind of thing you will have to decide for yourself as you develop a prose style.
In fiction the first paragraph can also set the story with some exposition that reveals how
the characters got to where they now are and sometimes where the story is gong and
why the story is going in the direction it is. But that kind of introductory paragraph is much
more common in non fiction and is usually followed by one or more paragraphs in the
body and a concluding paragraph.
But there can be many variations of this structure depending upon the intent of the writer,
e.g. a journalist would begin with the most important elements of his story: He uses a
Who, When, Where, What, Why and how style in the first paragraph or two so we get the
idea quickly, then he adds possibly more complex or thorough information but of
diminishing interest to the average reader. Often the in-depth text is on another page.
Journalists were once thought of as watchdogs for the people, but today’s socialist press
is more a tool for the state. The state will make certain the headlines and first paragraphs
are consistent with socialist efforts to seize and maintain power. Moreover, stories will be
run in a way that serves the government and is detrimental to voices of freedom. That’s
the reason the government is trying to take control of the internet—one of he few places
left that contains a genuine marketplace of ideas.
Most people no longer believe that journalists are objective, unbiased reporters acting in
the best interests of their readership. We have come to accept a journalist’s role as
propagandists for their respective political patron--usually communist or socialist
controlled entities. Since the government is now attempting to shut down any opposition
press, we will probably soon lose a free press and the concept of free speech will be
become an anachronous concept until freedom fighters take back the United States of
America.
Chapter
Poetry often uses lines, as does prose, but while a prose line ends simply because it has
gone as far as it can go on the page, a poet uses lines for many reasons. The lines he
uses are often organized into stanzas, which some people call poem paragraphs. The
lines can end at the end of a sentence or the poet can use enjambment and run a
sentence over to the next line. It depends upon what the poet is trying to do.
The first thing almost everyone talks about is concrete and abstract words. And it is as
good a place to start as any. Although, it is important that you feel free when you are
learning about poetry; you do not have to start at the beginning and plod through a
anything you might find. Find whatever strikes your interest and learn as little or as much
as you like. Don’t let it become a difficult burden or become discouraged if it seems
difficult at first. If you just keep browsing, the next time you see the same thing you may
wonder what you ever thought was hard about it.
Concrete words denote something literal we share some palpable reference for in our
minds. You have a very specific reference in your mind for concrete words. Remember,
words are just sounds we have assigned to things we have sensed in the world. There
are concrete things such as snake or water or tree. And abstract things like communism,
tyranny, arrogance, academia, suffering and government.
Sometimes concrete words are just that, words that refer us to something very specific
like canary. If I am writing about songbirds, then canary means just that. But if I am
writing a detective story, I might say “To the delight of Detective Flannigan, the hired gun
sang like a canary.” We write with concrete words that call forth images that remind us
of something else, probably more abstract words.
That would be a figure of speech. In this case we are not saying the hired gun pleased
the policeman with an entertaining bird imitation; we are saying he gave a lot of
information, perhaps informed on his cohorts, like a frightened little bird.
Figures of speech that use like or as are similes. They say one thing is similar to another.
A Metaphor is a figure of speech that replaces the thing it is describing.. For example if
you were one of the thief’s cohorts, you might say, “The bulls beat a confession out of the
kid.” We know a group of bulls did not assault a young man to gain information. But in this
case we not saying the police are like bulls; we are saying they are bulls. It is a stronger
assertion and less able to be removed.
If something is similar, it is not quite the same so can be something else as well, but if a
policeman is a bull, that is what we’re saying he reminds us of in the world. Not like a bull,
but a big, stupid male animal that attacks and scares people without thinking. Both of
these are common figures of speech in a genre. But unless you are doing a character
that uses clichés, you want to come up with your own more interesting figures of speech.
We also use concrete words as symbols of abstractions. Common literary symbols are
the rose for love, the black bird for evil, an eagle for freedom, a star for a sheriff, a tank
for war i.e. something concrete that stands for something abstract, often it is something
we connect with the abstraction e.g. a scull and crossbones for death. There is also
similar imagery used to replace things or people we know. Metonymy is something we
associate with something else. “The White House” is the executive branch of our
government. “The Crown” as a monarh or our “hired gun” as a contract killer.
Similar is a synecdoche that uses some part of a thing to refer to it, a pilot might call his
airplane his wings. The most common I’ve read is “my wheels” for a vehicle. In English
Literature if they invite someone to “tea” you are not just inviting them to sit and drink tea.
Tea is often a synecdoche for an informal dinner the way we say “let’s grab lunch.”
I don’t know how old I was, but I know I was prepubescent the day my I told my
grandmother about my concern for the British diet. I thought all the British did was invite
friends to guzzle tea, maybe add something called a “crumpet” if they were lucky. She
loved tea and drank it often, but I did not. It was a bland and disgusting thing to me and I
thought those poor people should at least get some bacon and eggs once and a while.
I was taken aback by how hard she was laughing, and she told me she was not laughing
at my question, but at how intensely serious I was about the whole matter. She then
made matters worse by telling me the English actually ate fish with their eggs. The whole
affair made such an impression upon me that here it is a half century later and it is one of
my fondest memories.
Incidentally, we often confuse i.e. with e.g. I remember it because I think of i.e. as an
acronym for “in essence.” It’s not really but that helps me distinguish between the two. e.
g. means “example.” Whenever I see e.g. I sound out e.g. as egg and then lengthen it to
egg sample which sounds like example. However since a lot of people don’t know the
difference; I don’t use either of them unless I’m really crunched for space or time.
Well, I was digressing there, but that is what I decided to do—take the narrative
wherever it goes rather than list topics them one by one explain what I know about them.
So, let’s go back to the word “snake.” It also has a very strong connotation. It connotes
potential danger and evil to many other than the dedicated naturalist. If you were trying to
be even more concrete or specific you might say copperhead instead of “snake” or
swamp instead of “water” or weeping willow instead of “tree.”
A copperhead connotes more danger because we know they are a poisonous species. A
swamp connotes murky, sometimes dangerous waters with very scary things like hungry
alligators and poisonous snakes and a weeping willow not only literally says a crying tree,
but we tend to associate it with a spooky or unhappy setting.
Not always, I recall the rustling of a weeping willow near a pond one summer day the
spot where my girlfriend and I were having a picnic. It is a very pleasant personal
experience.
But, when I wrote: “I have tried to block out the memory of these teachers, but still they
linger and lurk and slither through my mind like the poisonous water moccasins of a murky
Floridian swamp.” I used snake and swamp because those concrete words have more
impact than if I said “the memory of those teachers still bothers me today.”
Some might say it is melodrama. I disagree. In any event, it illustrates connotation and
denotation. Even linger, lurk and slither have a strong connotation. They only denote
hanging out, maybe looking around and moving quietly. But they connote something much
more sinister.
Poets generally like to use a lot of sensory words that can be seen, heard, smelled,
touched and tasted. Some, such as the ever popular object of art the apple can bring to
most minds each of these senses. We all have seen an apple, but we have also heard
the crunch of that first bite, smelled the release of those apple molecules as we bit in to
it, touched the smooth cool skin if we got it our of the fridge, or felt the sticky wax if we
ate it off a warm super market shelf, and we have savored a sweet or tart taste
depending on the name of apple. A “Delicious” brand apple would be sweet, a Macintosh
not so sweet. That’s why naming the apple in a poem helps the imagery in your reader’s
mind.
Usually we don’t think in terms of all five senses at once. It depends on the context. We
usually only hear in our mind’s ear, so to speak, a bell when the writer brings it up, but
maybe we see too if the writer says it is a church bell.. In our mind’s eye and ear we
refer to a day in our past: we drive up the street towards church one Sunday morning in
July.
Let me interject here. I wanted to stay away from lists and labels and headings and just
let this read in a more relaxed conversational tone. But I am going to label the next few
pages the sounds of poetry and prose so you can listen a little more to the sounds as you
read a little narrative I’m going to write.
In a narrative, whether you’re discussing prose or narrative poetry, you are telling a story.
The story has characters and plot. I am going to put sound in the story because we are
thinking about the sounds in prose and poetry. That might make it sound a little childlike
because we associate written out sounds like “bam!” or “ratatatatatat” with children’s
books or comic books.
First, let the child in you be free to enjoy anything you read. Second, be patient; I’m not
being condescending; I am trying to illustrate how words have various sounds that poets
use, sometimes poets use words more for those sounds than the actually denotation of
the words. This may be very obvious to the advanced reader, but many of us read
without paying much attention to the sounds—at least not consciously.
I am using the second person pronoun “you” because I want you to imagine yourself in
this scene of the narrative. To make it easy on myself, I am going to base the story on an
actual incident in my youth. Since I am 59 years old, I am setting this in 1968.
The window’s open in your lime green, 1967 Mercury Cougar with the black vinyl roof,
black interior and bucket seats. Ding Dong. You stare at the tolling church bell as you
down shift that four on the floor and you pretend to ignore that Black Plymouth Fury you
are pulling along side at the light on the corner; that rich kid from Whitefish Bay is driving
the Fury, the loud ‘vroom, vroom’ of his engine revving is the challenge.
Exhaust shoots out the tail pipe as pistons slide and valves open and shut and rockers
rock and the cam shaft spins reaching an rpm that makes the car ready for—Ding dong—
that clutch to close and the rubber burn as both cars scream off the line.
It’s tempting. It could be an opportunity for glory. Ding Dong, You look again at the church
bell a half block away and on the left side of the street, you see below on the steps,
smiling in the sunshine, Carla Olivero and Marge Harris. As usual, Carla is the sexiest
dressed virgin in Milwaukee.
She’s wearing that red ruffled peasant blouse, shoulders out, and enough cleavage
exposed to send a little blood—Ding Dong--to your crotch from a half block away. It tops
her black paten leather mini skirt and red fishnet stockings. Her right leg is stepping up
and you think you see a flash of golden brown thigh between the dark red tops of the
nylons and her black garter belt.
She seems to be looking back at you and laughing, although since Marge is looking at her
and laughing too, you assume it is an over active imagination that says they have even
see you yet. You think Carla is really laughing with Marge. Ding Dong.
It doesn’t really matter. Everyone knows Carla is all show and no go. In fact, Mat
Dembrowski once put a rolled up sock in his pants and then swiveled his hips near her
face as he moved past her seat in Sunday school. Her eyes went wide and so much
white showed you forgot she had an iris and pupil, especially when they rolled up behind
her top eyelid. She didn’t scream or anything, but she was breathing real funny just after
Mat passed her.
You were looking right at her when her eyes rolled up and she slid out of her chair like a
basted turkey from the hands of a six-year-old girl. That’s a personal simile that reflects
an incident one Thanksgiving that happened to one of your five sisters.
The point is there is no time to stop it. Ding Dong. Carla suddenly slid off the folding chair
and her body crumpled with a thud onto the floor, sending two empty chairs in front of her
clanging and clattering into the front row all while those around her were leaping up to
make their unsuccessful catch.
They revived her and walked her out. A little while later they came back for Mat. Since
that day. As he left the room, he tucked in his white shirt tail that had come out when he
desperately pulled out the balled up socks, and pulled the bottom of his sweater vest
over his waist. Mat will not talk about it, but you noticed he always was very courteous to
Carla after that.
Ding Dong. Now your wondering if you can wind up that little 289 enough for your
Mercury to take the heavy Plymouth off the line. You’ve tested the set of wheels your
driving many times before Your car is light and you decide you’ll be first off the line and
have a moment of glory. But, your little Cougar doesn’t have the power; once the tires
stop screaming you’ll barely get across the street, the smell of burning rubber filling your
nostrils, when the grill of the Plymouth will blast through the smoke from your burning tires
and pass your Cougar like it was a kitten.
My God, by the time you are both in front of the girls, he’ll be three car lengths ahead of
you. It’s not skill or heart; it’s just physics. He has too much horse power. The cops drive
those Furys; his old man works for the mayor. He probably got a deal on the Fury in
exchange for the city buying their fleet from Plymouth. That’s the way they are in
government: it’s not enough they already have more than anyone else, they have to cheat
on top of it. Although, this guy doesn’t really seem like such a bad kid.
Right now, that’s not important. You and him both know he has more power behind him,
but, to the girls, your shining little lime green Couger looks prettier and more sporty than
his bulky Plymouth. The problem is you can’t tell from here if the girls are looking at you
two or not, They may not even see you beat him off the line, They may look just as he is
passing you across the street.
There’s no glory in that. And from the way Marge talked to you at the last church dance
Saturday, it was pretty clear she wouldn’t be fainting if you could get her to take a walk
with you in the woods at the Fourth of July picnic. No, things are on track, you have a
date with Marge and there’s been some interesting promises implied—which is all a good
church girl can do and preserver her rep.
This would be a terrible time to be humiliated by a rich kid in a Plymouth. What was he
doing down here anyway. You look over and he is waving at Carla and she is waving
back. Maybe that’s what Carla is saving herself for. You don’t know, but you have plans
for Marge and you’re not letting this guy use you to score Carla. That kind of sacrifice is
part of the code, but it only goes for buds, not rich kids from the North Shore. Right now
you have the advantage and you are not throwing it away.
No you’ll go to church as planned. You rev your engine lightly, as if to accept his
challenge, but when the light changes, you flip on your signal and turn left so you can
drive around through the back alley and park in the church parking lot. The Plymouth
squeals down the street and by the time he realizes you turned off, he’s in front of the
girls, looking like a goof ball that just wants attention.
You walk into church smiling and say your good mornings like you’re as innocent as a
new born. People are coming in the front complaining about the fool screaming down the
street on a beautiful Sunday morning, putting people at risk and all. You walk up to Carla
and Marge. Marge turns and is looking straight in your eyes as she is saying to Carla,
“Yes, it was almost as if someone egged him on, then turned off at the last minute. Carla
laughs but she has no idea what the hell Marge is talking about.
Marge smiles as she passes you and reminds you she will see you at the picnic. Nothing
much gets past that Marge; you decide to let her choose when and where it will happen
between the two of you. Mostly, because you know if you try to decide for her, it won’t
happen. You really like Marge.”
Lets think about some of the more obvious sounds in the scene—especially the
onomatopoeia like “vroom, revved. Ding Dong, thud, squeal, clatter and clang. What
makes the words sound like the actual event? One answer would be that we have all
heard an engine rev or a bell peal or tires squeal and we are referencing that sound in our
minds. But, there is more to it than that, especially with these words. The letters
contribute sounds that sound like the actual event. The letters get their sounds from the
way we pronounce them. In this instance, as is very often the case in poetry, we are
listening not only to the references we can recall, but to the sounds we are hearing at that
moment if we want to really experience some of the fun of poetry.
Recall the vowel scale we talked about: the “oo” sound in vroom is the lowest on the
scale. We also heard it in boom. Don’t forget we are talking about the vowel sound not
the visual appearance of the vowel. The word vacuum has the same sound despite that it
uses the long “u.” The short sound of “u” comes nearer to the middle of the scale just
below a short sound “a,” “e” and “i.,” that are also in the middle of the scale, respectively.
The highest sounds are the long “i,” “a” and “e” sound such as in “drive or fry” and “faint
or bake” or as in “squeal or beep.”
The consonants also have sounds. And, when you are listening, those sounds contribute
to your enjoyment of prose or poetry. In “vroom” the “m” lingers on just as an engine
would die down as it lost the energy from that brief acceleration out of gear. Think of the
word “hum.” Hear how the “m” lingers to achieve that vibrancy. You often will see an m,
n, or z for example, in a poem about bees. Listen to the word “bees.” It has the highest
pitch vowel sound then the “z” sound. If you talk about buzzing bees, it is so close to the
sound in nature, you might want to run before you are stung.
There are many sounds to listen for in words, especially in poetry. Think of “kick” that
starts and ends with that hard cacophonous sound. Actually, cacophony does the same
thing with the “c” sound and actually means that sound. I think of “clap.” It has that hard
“c” sound from the back of the throat and also that percussive “p” sound that comes when
you open your lips and allow the escape of air you have pressurized in your mouth. You
make a “b” sound by the subtle reduction in pressure. The “t” and “d” take a little work
with the tip of the tongue allowing the air to escape. Oddly enough, the word tongue itself
begins with the tip of the tongue allowing air to escape, creating its “t” sound and ends
with another percussive “g” sound that uses the back of the tongue to allow the air to
escape. And, speaking of air that escapes, listen to the word “escape” to hear the
breathy hissing “s” sound of air escaping and the final percussive sound at the end when
the air escapes your lips.
It may sound silly but the “s” sound can seem so salient it subverts the prose and
sometimes some listeners unconsciously focus so much on the sound instead of the story
that some writers seek to subdue or even censor the “s” sound from their stuff.
It makes the paragraph hiss like a deflating tire finally falling flat. The letter “f” is also a
breathy letter as are the “sh, ch and th” sounds.
You should also pay attention to letters with liquidity such as l, r and w. These have
resonance like n, m, and z but a more subtle flowing, musical quality. Again, it seems to
be about less pressure in the pronunciation.
You may disagree. Why not play with the pronunciation and pay attention to what you are
doing with your mouth. Remember, it is appropriate, some say necessary, to read poetry
aloud. After all, verse began as a vocal art, a way to spread the news or hand narratives
down from one generation to the next. That’s one reason we hear so much alliteration
and rhyme in early verse, to help people recall the stories. It can be great fun.
That’s the most important thing: have fun; we’re all learning. I am just trying to throw out a
few things many average readers struggle with when they read poetry. But it is important
that you don’t take this too seriously and forget any negative experience you associate
with Western Literature.
I have had the negative experiences with academics familiar with these elements of prose
and poetry that use this knowledge to inflate their egos at the expense of their students
or to validate their socialist theories. But, it is not that big of a deal.
Mark Twain said, “An idiot is someone who doesn’t know something you learned ten
minutes ago.” And that, to me, tells us about the academic “elite.” They have a little
information that is no longer common knowledge, so they think it somehow elevates them.
The truth is “teaching” elevates them, wallowing in their own excretions just makes them
the type of animal that wallows.
Once we all shared this knowledge, but the academic deconstructionists have so
destroyed our ability to listen to and appreciate the literary heritage of the Western
Culture, they now are the only people who even have the essential listening skills to
appreciate it. But that is so easy to fix, all we have to do is listen and we too will hear.
It is admittedly unfortunate that today most of us get our first exposure to “literature” in
academia. These mind molesters have become gatekeepers to this amazing world of
insight and beauty. But, please know that these academic do not own the literary world
and with a little effort the damage they do can be overcome. I promise you it is worth the
effort.
Speaking of “listening,” now is as good a time as any to bring up the debate on the
relative merit of meter. Many people today are very put off by meter in a poem. However,
for now, let’s just leave all these literary giants of today to argue about things like
metered poetry and free verse. We are trying to understand our cultural heritage--
Western Literature.
There are many ways to enjoy a poem. We may be looking to unravel; the mystery, the
great insights, enjoy the imagery or take comfort in how we identify with a situation or
feeling or philosophy that we may share with the persona in a poem. But to truly
experience and enjoy a poem, we should at least pay attention to what the rhythm feels
like to us, including the formal meter if it exists in the work.
It’s also possible we wish to learn more about the people of the time the poem was
written. Often we gain insight from poetry that history has hidden from us. Often
Communist politicians are too stupid to understand what a poet is saying so great insight
will slip through the inevitable censorship that tyrannical governments impose on art and
literature. Today, the National Endowment for the Arts would more appropriately be
called the National Endowment for Communist Propaganda. Please don’t let yourself fall
into some pointless debate about outdated style. Just try hard to experience the poetry.
The least of your worries should be knowing too much about out history.
In fact, that might be another distinction between poetry and prose—we experience a
poem but we read prose to glean information. We have been taught to read prose as
quickly and efficiently as possible. The line length is from margin to margin in prose and
the sentences justify on the left and wrap around on the right and end wherever they end.
There is rhythm but usually not formal meter or measured units.
The rhythm of prose is more in the varied sentence lengths, short or long vowels in the
words, repeated sentence beginnings, things like that. Certainly, the current trend is to
minimize and use simple sentences, and that’s fine if it achieves whatever you are trying
to achieve—usually please your communist professor who could care less so long as you
are willing to scrawl it on a sign and burn it in the street or the self-satisfied twit at some
in-vogue fagazine that likes simple sentences so its pretentious professional readership
can know how much pubic hair they should shave off and what are the “in” products to
use to do it.
If that’s what they want, give it to them. If in your heart, you like a more literary and
traditional style, read it; savor it; enjoy it but don’t bother arguing with them about it; there
is no right or wrong here, they don’t know what they don’t know. and it is not worth your
degree or your job trying to convince the “elite” that they are missing something great.
Historically, meter has always played a large part of defining a poem’s structure, even if it
is the lack of meter as in free verse. Free verse, poetry with little or no meter, has great
popularity right now. But it is not really “free” of anything except the requirement that you
conform to some formal structure. It does not mean you are free to be stupid; to write
whatever you want and call it poetry. Here again, there usually is some kind of rhythm.
Like prose, it uses things like assonance and also consonance. As poetry it has the
added element of line length and pauses to create interesting rhythm. It can end a
sentence at the end of the line or use enjambment, which is simply ending the line before
the sentence is complete and ending the sentence later in the poem—often in the next
line, but it can be anywhere down the poem right down to the end of the poem.
Free verse is very popular today. If that is so, you may ask, and since I don’t really
understand meter, why should I worry about it? Why don’t I just write in free verse. My
answer to that would be that it is easier for the beginner to write something worthwhile in
meter. If you write in the easiest meter, iambic tetrameter, which is simply four Iambic
feet, even a poem that has little to offer has, at least, a little beat to it. A bad free verse
is just bad. Most people won’t know it from prose, and as prose, it usually is even worse.
Meter works by putting stressed and unstressed syllables in a pattern. Placing stress or
accent on a syllable is something we all do when we speak. If I say I am upset because
I don’t know meter or how to scan poetry. The accent is on the second syllable in upSET.
In this case, the word is an iambic foot or a unit with the first syllable unstressed and the
second syllable stressed. If we had three more units or feet with the stress or accent on
the second syllable in a line of poetry, it would be four feet and called a line of iambic
tetrameter.
Iambic pentameter, five feet with first an unstressed and then a stressed syllable is the
most well known. Shakespeare and a long list of others wrote in this meter. If you read
enough of it, you will begin to easily recognize it. Until then just say the line in your head
or aloud and try to scan to determine the stresses yourself. Check yourself with the
dictionary. The iambic foot is the basis for all the other feet. They just switch the stress
around to the first syllable stressed and second unstressed, called a “trochee” or add to
one or both of the stresses. The list is: the iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee,
pyrrhic, amphimacer or cretic, amphibrach, minor ionic (pyrrhic + spondee), major ionic
(spondee + pyrrhic).
For example, if I say the game was won by the lowest ranking team in the league and the
upset nearly bankrupt a bookmaker who had allowed a huge last minute bet on the long
shot. The accent is on the first syllable in UPset. In this case, the same word has a
different accent. The accent can depend on definition or even context.
It us said that poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. If poetry is to prose as dancing
is to walking, then there must be some formal structure to the poetry that defines the
dance we are doing. Both of these arts move in time. Unlike a painting or a sculpture that
might freeze a moment in time, poetry, like dance, has movement in time. How it moves
through time is part of what we appreciate about these arts. Which reminds me of a story:
When I was about eleven or twelve years old, I was making donuts with my grandmother.
As J dropped the circle of flour and sugar into the bubbling grease I asked if she read the
mimeographed sheet I had left on the table last night.
The administration was going to begin Friday night dances for sixth, seventh and eighth
graders at Dover Street Elementary School in Milwaukee. That was before the
communists had seized American schools and the administrators were still trying to
provide working-class children with an education that would help them adjust to American
society, not indoctrinate them into an overthrow of the government.
I really wanted to go; I had gone to my Catholic friend’s Christian Youth Organization
(CYO) dances and had a great time. They had balloons and yellow and blue crepe strung
from the ceiling. There were games like a bean bag toss at a board that has a clown with
c with a hole where the mouth was supposed to be, a big red nose pained above the
mouth and wide eyes with long black big lashes. Crescents of bright yellow hair streaked
out above the clowns white ears and a beneath a brown derby. I remember it well
because I played bean bag toss while others danced. And dance those kids did, they
looked like a bunch of Catholic Indians the way they were a hoping and hollering and
jumping around to that music. I was having fun and since I was a guest, it didn’t bother
me too much that I didn’t dance.
But now these were my pubic school classmates and friends. It would be embarrassing if
I didn’t dance. I was afraid to go because I had no clue how to dance. It was one thing
to sit on the sidelines with a bunch of strangers, but I had gone to school with this Dover
Street group since kindergarten. I wondered if anyone, even my grandmother, could help
me solve the dance dilama. Just as I was wondering if they would have a bean bag toss,
my grandmother said she could teach me a basic waltz and that would carry me through.
Well, this was the pre-Beatles age with recordings of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and
Chubby Checker’s “twist.” The King was still Elvis, and I didn’t know how something that
sounded as old-fashioned as the waltz would work with music from “the killer” Jerry Lee
or ole Swivel-hips Elvis, but she was my grandma and I trusted her.
So I learned the basic three steps, and I got so comfortable with them I was doing some
swirls and a few other things she laughingly called my “fancy dance” maneuvers. I had a
lot of fun learning this with my grandmother. And, although it was only a basic step, it also
taught me to use the four parts of my foot—the heel, the toe, the ball and the flat.
None the less, I felt I was so bad that I would still probably still be humiliated at the
dance. But, I really wanted to go. In those days the boys and girls used separate
playgrounds and we didn’t get together that often. Our interest in girls was just beginning
to blossom and so too were the girls that would be at the dance.
At least they appeared to be filling out. To demonstrate our prepubescent worldliness,
there was much whispered speculation by the boys on how much of the womanhood
exhibited by torpedo training bras and tight sweaters was supplied by the Kleenex
Company.
Research in this area could be dangerous. We devised various maneuvers where an
elbow or shoulder might accidentally brush a girl in such a way as to determine whether
the impressive filling had the lack of resilience and buoyancy that was the unmistakable
shortcoming of wadded Kleenex. The goal was that the subject never knew she had
participated in the study. And, since bumping into Kleenex caused no pain, few ever knew.
To our credit, most of us never really went through with it anyway and our reported
results were woefully skewed by our desire to be part of the gang without hurting the girl
who had just consented to the dance and given you the two most amazing minutes of
your life.
Usually we returned to the pack and announced with the pride of a man who had
accomplished his mission and increased his worldly knowledge at the same time, our
certainty that our young lady was not putting up a false front. Although, I do not know to
what end we made these investigations. I can think of no instance where possessing this
information, true or false, made even the smallest difference in our behavior towards one
of our classmates.
The truth was, we were all scared witless and lived in terror that one of the young ladies
would express any kind of distain for us, our appearance, deplorable dancing skills or our
ballroom etiquette or lack there of and we rarely reported any negativity and then only
defensively.
Anyway, my grandmother was right again. It turned out those three steps were three
steps more than any other boys at the dance had learned. I dominated the floor that night
and the line of girls I got to dance with exceeded my wildest expectations. I even got to
dance with some of the older seventh and eight grade girls that, here-to-fore, I had only
been allowed to admire from a distance. That night I was the coolest cat in the entire
sixth grade of Dover Street Elementary School.
Moreover, just knowing those how to put pressure on my feet made me appear as if I
had doing the modern dances for decades or perhaps developed the twist myself.
Compared to the uncontrolled gyrations of most of the 10-12 year old set at Dover, I was
really cooking and getting attention from all those older and wiser and certainly more
bumpy eighth-grade women. I informed them that they looked “charming” as I had often
read men in novels refer to women who were having that kind of affect on them.
Of course, in those days, we would not have had a clue what to do should we ever
actually win over the passions of our dream girls, but that was not the point. The point
was that we could get a girl, or at least we could a girl to accept our invitation to dance
without them throwing up on our shoes.
Anyway, my point here is that sometimes just knowing a few of the good old-fashioned
basics can put you way ahead of the pack—especially with those older and wiser women.
“The lumbering mechanical giant plodded through the woods towards Lake Michigan. The
snapping of tree trunks terrorized already hysterical townsfolk even before the alien
leviathan came into the clearing. As it approached the artillery hiding in the brush near the
beach, the military men made ready. The crowd had been cautioned to stay still so as not
to give away their position.
But as soon as the Martian was in sight, the civilians began to scream and flee. Many
people ran through the sand and entered the lake at a full run, splashing wildly until they
fell, drawing the attention of the aliens. The turret atop the mechanical beast turned and
the air filled with that unholy whine as the dreaded red ray of light swept through the
green, frothy water washing up on the shore, disintegrating anything in its path. Shrieks of
terror abruptly stopped and only steam rose from water that seconds before held a
thrashing young woman.
His fury fueled by those that died.
“Fire!” a rasping sergeant cried.
Ba boom ba boom ba boom ba boom.
They fought while facing certain doom.
On and on the brave men fired the battery of artillery into the belly of that beast—
knowing any moment the red ray would turn their way and they would join the ranks of
those already claimed by this mechanical horror. Still, the sergeant ordered the platoon to
hold their position so as many townsfolk as possible could escape during the barrage.
That was when the whining of ray stopped. For a moment the giant metal tripod stood
silent, then one leg bent and the entire contraption let our a deafening creak of metal
against metal and toppled over itself clattering and clanging until it hit the mud with a loud
splat and a force that rained mud upon everything within a hundred yards!
There was silence for a time as everyone stared at what now seemed only a colossal
heap of metal. But as the company of soldiers gave out a victorious cheer, the first they
had known since the aliens had attacked, people began coming out from behind the
brush, and crawling and stumbling out of the shallow water to the shore. Men, women
and children, faces covered in scratches and mud or their soaking wet clothes clinging to
shivering frames. There was limping and bleeding, but soon they too began cheering and
some even dancing as for the first time since it began, there was hope for the defeat of
the invaders.”
Before we begin our discussion of prose and poetry I want to make one thing clear. We
are beginners and intermediates; we are here to help each other. We are not here to
eviscerate innocent human beings who have expressed an interest prose and poetry. I
have heard unbelievably ruthless, arrogant comments from people about writers that they
feel have not reached their own levels of expertise—although, I find it interesting that the
more genuinely accomplished the writer of prose or poetry, the less he or she feels the
need to bash beginners.
Whatever the pinochles of perfection and profundity in prose or the pleasantries and
epiphanies of poetry that you may have achieved in those three lecture hours at your
college “Intro to Literature” course, if you find this site unbearably beneath you, please
exercise your right to find another site where your vitriol will be met with those equally
aghast at our ineptitude. We shall endeavor to somehow muddle along without you.
If you are still with me, we are here to learn and try to have fun. For example, the little
iambic tetrameter verse I included in the scene was designed to be obvious meter and
easily scanned, hence line three. Line two is a variant to demonstrate that a formal meter
usually varies, especially today, to keep the multitudes of sophisticates from dozing off.
I know there is a long standing debate about free verse and metered poetry. But many
people barely understand what “meter” is in a poem. They may have not read enough
poetry to find metered verse monotonous. If writing metered verse in iambic tetrameter
helps them develop an ear for poetry, then we need to be encouraging.
If someone is playing with meter to emulate some beloved poet of the past or to see how
it works or even if they enjoy writing metered verse then that is a positive thing—much
better than the apathy that most people feel. There is no need to involve us all in some
esoteric debate that most people will not understand and is far more destructive than
constructive.
The last thing a new poet needs after completing a metered poem that was fun for him or
her to write and probably taught that poet a lot and got them thinking about whether or
not they want to use meter, is for someone to tell them, in the terminology of every
pompous twit that takes pleasure in deflating blossoming writers, is that their effort is
“Sing Song and vapid.”
First, the world loved accentual meter for centuries and its lack of merit today is only
opinion. I happen to love accentual meter, often the further in the past it was written the
more I enjoy it, if only for the historical lessons. Moreover, I think meter and rhyme
sometimes echo too loudly in an empty head. If today's "elite" knew how to listen and not
just skim to see where a poem fits in their theories and agendas, they might not hear the
rhyme and rhythm so loudly. Perhaps a little focus on what the artist is actually saying--
the content--might prevent other elements from overwhelming them.
For many of us, meter and rhyme has always been satisfying and fun. It’s been said that
versification is to prose as walking is to dancing. I see that as so. If you are someone
who likes to write in meter, don’t let the poet police of today keep you from dancing to
the poems of yesterday or from writing verse yourself that can make someone’s mind
dance. It can be a great gift to give someone who has not been told yet that he or she is
not allowed to enjoy the dance. Besides, someday poetry may again be free for all of us
to enjoy, not just an insufferable few in academia.
Moreover, for you experts who persist in denigrating we who like meter, I think Whitman,
the prince of free verse, was bombastic, self-involved gas bag--as are so many of his
adherents today. Still, I would not denigrate a new poet who writes in free verse. I know
that thousands of accomplished poets write free verse, and can write in either formal or
free or both or something else, depending upon what’s best for the poem and the
audience. I respect their right and their preference and, who knows, two years from now
it may be my favorite form. People evolve; poets evolve. That is unless some pretentious
phoney gets under their skin and drives them away from the pursuit.
Second, no one starts at the top. Give people a chance to play with this art before you
demand they write the perfectly formed, balanced, deep, serious prose and poetry you
think you are writing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to discourage professionals from
helping a writer who is making a mistake. If you are an advanced reader or writer and
have constructive critique, we are lucky to have you and would love to hear it. I’m just
asking that if what you have to say is negative, try to remember some people are actually
closely listening to you. Try to have a little mercy.
I spent decades trying to stop associating the subject of literature with the UWM English
Department and trying to get the voices of a few arrogant, angry women out of my mind.
I know now that these “writers” were not examples of strong female leaders in the field.
They were shallow, cowardly women who pretended to be something they were not—
accomplished writers. I also know now that these insensitive, self-serving and greedy
people were paid for something they didn’t do—teach composition. Unfortunately, I did
not know that at the time and listened intently to what these “teachers” said.
Obviously, there are many outstanding female writers and teachers, but having a vagina
is not a valid prerequisite for teaching literature or assuming leadership positions in
college English Departments. At least it never has been until now. The down side of the
new academic focus on pigmentation and genitalia is that--in the name of progress—
incompetent administrators at UWM betrayed the public trust and handed the positions
over to empty-headed mind molesters and soul butchers like those who run the UWM
English Department.
Consequently, the women, as well as the men, who actually are writers and teachers end
up waiting tables or mixing concrete while these criminals in academia go on defrauding
the public, advancing hidden agendas while pretending to be teachers.
Another consequent is the pathetic ranking of our students world-wide and the lack of
recognition of American writers by the world literary community. Outside of the United
States, literary recognition can not be gained by the usual strong arm tactics of our cheap
academic thugs. Of course, cheap is their relative value, their costs to the taxpayers is
anything but cheap and their cost to all of us in lost artists is immeasurable. To me, there
is nothing lower than a teacher who deliberately demoralizes or undermines her or his
student for personal reasons or political ends.
Chapter two
I would like you to reread this scene I rewrote from War of the Worlds. Since the plot is
familiar to most of us either through books, television, movies or even tapes, think more
about the sounds of the words and not so much the content of the scene or the meaning
of he words.
As a hint, you should pay attention to assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds like “too
and soon” or “scream and flee” (sometimes combined vowels combined with other letters
have the same sound) and consonance the repetition of consonant sounds like the
repeating “t” in “battery and artillery.” Also, watch for a special kind of consonance called
alliteration which is the repeating of the first consonant such as in “belly and beast.”
Finally, pay attention to onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they represent such
as “spat.” You don’t have to come to any conclusions or memorize anything, just notice
the combinations of the sounds when they come up.
When you are paying attention to the sounds of letters, listen to vowels and think of the
musical concept of “pitch.” Say “boom, tweet” several times, for example, and you will
notice that “oo” sounds low on the scale and “ee” sounds high on the scale. In fact, there
is a kind of scale that you can use to make your poetry interesting. It is not necessary to
understand it perfectly immediately. Just know it exists. The long “o” and “u” sounds tend
to be low and the long “a, e and i” tend to be high. The short vowels sounds are in the
middle. Listen and you will find their place.
Reread the scene, remember, there’s no test just notice sounds a little more than usual.
Chapter Three
I suppose I must insert my standard disclaimer when I write prose or poetry or about it:
This is not for someone who is already a literary scholar or even an advanced reader of
American and English Literature. It is for those of us who simply enjoy reading and would
like a better understanding of the oft acclaimed literary arts--perhaps might even enjoy
playing with and exercising our own creativity with pen and paper or keyboard and
computer. Painting was not limited to Picasso; Baseball was not limited to Babe Ruth;
attacking villages was not limited to Attila; pondering to Plato; cooking to Kerr; sonnets to
Shakespeare; murder to Machiavelli; kissing to Kate; well, you know what I’m saying—
you don’t have to be a pro to give it a go.
Perhaps, like me, you have had good and bad experiences with the “academic elite.” Or
maybe you have found books by practiced poets hard to understand. I like reading books
by good poets. Most try hard to be sensitive to beginners if beginners are their audience.
But to many of us they are sometimes like computer nerds to baby boomers—they come
from somewhere many of us have never been and even the terms are undefined and
difficult for us to understand.
I am not going to construct a “text book” here, listing terms then defining them or listing
concepts then writing a chapter on each. There are great dictionaries of terms in prose
and/or poetry, and an abundance of introductory texts by brilliant scholars who are far
better resources than I if you are willing and able to just sit and study books on poetry.
That’s not false modesty. It’s fact. But, I love this stuff and I want to share some of that
with you.
I’m going to just write about poetry and prose. I’ll throw in a few small narratives that use
the elements we talk about, perhaps a few lines of verse to make a point. Certainly I will
try to cue what is in chapter in its heading, but the frame work will be to write about what
I think of as I am writing, as if we were just talking about poetry and prose.
Often I recall things people have told me they’re confused about-again, not literary critics
or academics, just average people curious about the topic. Many people are not even
sure what constitutes literature.
To me, the literature of a culture can be said to be the inner life its people written in an
especially beautiful or meaningful way. It reflects the ideals and accomplishments of a
culture as well as its failures. Although, today we see a lot more focus on our culture’s
failures than anything else. But there is an abundance of beauty and inspiration in our
Western Literature and it is your heritage if you are part of the culture—regardless of
who you are or where you came from, your social or legal status, if you are here and a
human, the writers were invariably talking to you.
As the visual media becomes more and more adept at capturing our attention, there are
fewer and fewer readers, particularly readers of the classics, out there. But I really would
enjoy sharing some of what I love to read and what I hear when I read, with interested
readers; if I have any interested readers. You and I could be the only people making this
journey. And you may exist only in my mind. Regardless, you, imaginary or not, and I are
important enough to justify this effort.
Chapter Four
I do have some small advantage over the average reader. The B.A. in “Journalism” from
the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee helps a little, but, I did not attend high school or
college until my mid thirties.
However, as a child, I lived with my grand mother and she loved English and American
Literature. Her house was filled with books. Her book shelves filled with the classics. I
recall her and I would each alternately choose a book to read a chapter from to each
other every night.
I was reading her choice to her one night: Anne of Green Gables which I thought I would
hate because it was a “girl’s book.” I became so enthralled with the book that I begged to
read it every night until we were done. After that we turned to my choice, which was
Gulliver’s Travels. We both enjoyed that book just as much.
In retrospect, I took for granted this amazing woman and the wonderful, rich childhood
she provided me, despite the poverty and dysfunction of my nuclear family. Because of
her, I was spared great, great pain and, although I knew we never had any money, I
never felt poor and seldom unhappy.
Her house would probably have been condemned as a fire hazard should any government
ghoul have peeked in the window. Books were everywhere. She used stacks of them as
tables and door stops and furniture legs and as platforms upon which to place plants or
to ripen fruit near a window sill, a window sill already hidden beneath or behind rocks or
plants or drift wood or any bit of what she called ‘natural art.’. She even used books to
keep books open to the correct page and paragraph on any of the dozens of books she
might be reading at any given time.
I spent many wonderful hours as a boy immersed in Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher.
Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, James Fennimore Cooper, O’ Henry, Longfellow, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and so many, many more. I laughed at the sounds of
poetry read by my grandmother at my cradle. Or later poems we read to each other that
made us laugh or cry or gasp. Poems like The Little Ghost published in a 1917 book of
poems by one of her favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, still stir something within me
because I so closely associate it with this woman I loved so deeply:
The Little Ghost
I KNEW her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high -- higher than most --
And the green gate was locked.
And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone --
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.
By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.
I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do -- and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!
She bent above my favourite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled -- there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.
She held her gown on either side
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go.
And where the wall is built in new
And is of ivy bare
She paused -- then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
I know why I love this poem. After working in my grandmother’s garden she would read
me a poem like this related to gardening. She made the poem seem so real to me that if I
didn’t know better, I would swear I recall seeing this ghost in her garden and that I KNEW
the ghost as well as the persona of the poem.
Chapter Five
My grandmother would do that with anything and make any poetry or literature seem that
much more real just by relating it to whatever activity we had been doing that day--
gardening or walking on the shores of nearby Lake Michigan or even something as simple
as a walk thru the woods would become something special when we would stop for lunch
and she began to read:
When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.
Stephen Vincent Benet.
This poem so delighted me that I was soon given, and I still possess to this day, three
copies of Western Star, an unfinished book, written mostly in verse, by Pulitzer prize
winning author, Stephen Vincent Benet about the settling of the American West.
It was not, however, the literal meaning of this poem that gave me pleasure. There was
something in the sound of the poem. As a boy, I barely understood it. It was the same
thing that often made me laugh when I was a toddler in my crib and knew little of the
meaning of any poem’s words. It was the musical sounds of the poem. The first line of
this poem contains the well known poetic device we mentioned called alliteration.
Alliteration is the repeat of the first consonant in words. Here it is “Boone” and “bye.” In
this instance, the poem is short and “burning” in line four is also meant to echo the
alliteration in the first line.
In line three there is consonance. That is also the repetition of a consonant sound as the
“l” in “all” and “lost” and “wild.” But here, of course, the sounds are not only at the
beginning of the word. Alliteration and consonance have played bigger roles in poetry of
the past than today, but to my mind there are no rules and if you want to use them, use
them, especially if you are just beginning to play with words. Just take care it does not
begin to sound silly, unless, of course, you are going for a silly sound such as this
childhood ditty:
“Great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts.
Mutated monkey meat.
Half eaten hippo hearts.
Only trouble was I had no bowl and spoon.”
.
Many poets feel the consonants provide our reference for the word. You can usually
understand a sentence without a, e, i, o and u.. e.g. Grt grn gbs grsy grmy gphr gts.
But some say the spirit of a poem is assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds. The
vowels provide the pitch. The low end of the scale is the oo sound as in “boom, boom,
boom.” The high end would be the ee sound as in “tweet, tweet,tweet.” If you say them
aloud, you will hear the low sound of the “boom” and high sound of the “tweet” without
having to impose a pitch on it. It just occurs naturally in speech, but, you have to listen.
Remember it is the sounds not the visual image of the vowels we are talking about now.
The “u” in “Thud” would be lower pitch than the “u” in buy, because the sound changes to
the long “I” sound of the “y.”
We have all heard the admonition “i” before “e” except after “c” or when it sounds like “a”
as in “neighbor” and “weigh.” Dipthongs like “ei” or the “ai” in mail or the “oi” in boil or
(speaking of “sound”) the “ou” in sound, are very common in English. If you listen, you will
begin to here this melody everywhere, but if you would like a scale as a guide, check out
Western Wing: an introduction to poetry by Nims. Low to high here is a scale:
oo o oo aw oi ow ah u u(r)
too cone cook saw toy cow far thud curd
a e i i a ee
hat net kit kite weigh tweet .
Remember it is usually the sound you are listening for, not looking for the visual
appearance of the letter.
Chapter
Listening in spite of academic rhetoric.
Of course, all the letters have sounds, consonants included, so if you listen to them, you
will begin to see how they work in the tone or subject of the poem; how the “l” and “r” in
“lazy river” flows. Or the sound of escaping air in “f” or “s” or “ch” or “sh” or “th.” There
are percussion sounds like “d, p,t, and d.” This is not to say you have to use anything
here. But you will be a better writer if you listen to the sounds as well as the meanings.
These sounds often show up in onomatopoeia. Everybody likes words that sound like
what they represent. “boom,” “ding, dong,” “Plop,” to name a few.
And through all these nearly sixty years since my grandmother read into my cradle, I have
periodically found comfort and pleasure in the sights and sounds of poetry and verse.
Especially when I come across something my grandmother and I enjoyed together. On
those occasions an already satisfying experience will take on that additional meaning. As
I write this I can hear her voice reading that poem and feel her happiness and her love of
the poetry and for me. It is a huge gift I wish for you. No matter what age you are, you
can usually find someone who also loves poetry and is willing to read with you.
Chapter Six
Throughout my life I have a developed a habit of walking and reading. It is probably as
annoying to some as today’s walkman radios are to me. That’s because the listener
(even in written form the key to enjoying poetry or prose, is listening.) is not really paying
attention to those about him as he listens to his Walkman or if he is reading he listens to
whatever it is he is reading. But, again, listening is the key to this all; you must listen.
Incidentally, a sub theme of this essay would be to stop interfering with your own ability
to listen and learn and savor and enjoy the written word. Don’t become impatient or
offended every time some author is not up on, or interested in, the latest in-vogue,
politically correct rule that some ivy league deconstructionist has mandated we all must
obey.
Let yourself enjoy what you enjoy. People loved verse for years, before the academics
started telling us we were stupid if we did. Don’t listen to that. It could be that some day
you will feel that way. You will just naturally get tired of one thing and want to listen to
poetry that has a more variety or less structure. But let that be your decision when you
are ready; don’t force yourself to dislike something just because someone told you’re not
supposed to like what the author has written.
I am familiar enough with academia to know many of these soul-butchers do exist in today’
s universities. I am absolutely certain of this: Most ivy-league or secular university
Literature departments are infested with pretentious, self-serving iconoclasts, some as
ignorant as they are arrogant. There anger is a psychological contaminant and you will be
better served by listening and trying to understand your readings of past scholars and
thinkers, than by some knee-jerk socialist reaction to a remark or word that is politically
incorrect or inconsistent with your professor’s pet theories. These idiots don’t care about
you. It is all about denying you the truth, teaching socialism and transferring power.
Some of these “teachers” are guilty of such molestation of the human mind that they
should be criminally prosecuted. Until this errant “faculty” can be reclaimed or eliminated
from the literary landscape, the best thing you can do for yourself when trapped in one of
these “institutions of lower learning” is learn how to filter what they say with what you
think.
I know your position as a student is tenuous because they abuse their power. You must
feed these professors whatever socialist tripe they enjoy, but please don’t believe for a
moment their oft-repeated refrain that all the beauty of Western art and literature that
came before the prose and poetry of deconstructionist propaganda is not valid.
Many of these amoral savages in today’s “literary community” stomp through Western
Literature like cows in a garden, chewing up flowers and beauty and giving us nothing but
their socialist shit it return. These people are more sociopathic than socialistic.
The literature of a culture is not only what is some have suffered and what is wrong with
it, but also what is noble and great in that culture—including Western culture. Most
important for you to remember is that your inner life is as important to literature as that
communist professor—perhaps even more so since it will probably be less filled with
hidden agendas and social engineering and more filled with truth and sincerity. That is
more important than anything these arrogant mind molesters at the university have to say
to you or any of the tripe they write.
Our inner life as a people is as many and varied as there are people and as much multi
faceted as each of those people. What is amazing about literature is, by definition, no
single perspective is less valid than any other. It’s just different and there a lot to be
learned from all of what is written, especially if it is beautiful as well. Don’t let them
convince you otherwise by calling the masters “old-fashioned” or those who refer to any
contemporary writings that disagree with them as “hate speech.”
Most secular academics are arrogant thugs with hidden agendas who don’t care what
they say or do to you if they believe it will help achieve their own political ends. They are
propagandists not educators. Try to see through their communist and socialist agendas
and write truth, at least in things you do not have to submit to them for a grade. The truth
will ultimately be recognized and rise to the top so long as we have freedom of speech
and create that marketplace of ideas. It could well be your truth that is close to the
reality we all want to live in. The world has already seen many times it is not socialist or
communist truth that is a desirable reality for the people. Present yours any way you can.
I did have a few great teachers in college who knew that and they seemed to feel my
work was worthy of some small regard. So while most of today’s “academic giants”
would sneer at me and what I like, I think you’ll find hidden agendas in those who waste
all their time sneering at people.
I promise you if you will spend a lot less time sneering, and a lot more time learning, in
the end you will reap rewards these rabid iconoclasts can not even imagine. Fortunately
for me, I am too old to worry much about what does or does not make today’s literary
giants sneer.
Still, it is only fair to warn you that my perspective is anything but on the literary vanguard.
Your English professor may snort milk out of his nose if you try to impress him over a bag
lunch in the park.with my thoughts on poetry. Come to think of it, would today’s profound,
politically correct professors take time from their mad scramble to ride their own ethnicity
or genitalia to literary glory to talk with a student over a bag lunch in the park? I suppose
we could change that to a talk over wine, cheese and whole grain scones at the local
book-store café, but even then you would probably have to buy.
You could discuss your ideas in bed if you have had to have sex with your professor to
get him or her to give a crap about your work.. That is the strategy a young person I
recently talked with. I had hoped that kind of thing was the wishful fantasies of young
English majors and today’s academics had, at least, the integrity not to use their position
to gain sexual favors from students. But, apparently it is common in today’s universities.
Ah, the nobility of the teaching profession. But, I digress.
Chapter
I am currently rereading “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, complete and unabridged. I
am reading it because I love the style and the register and tone and the sub themes and
the settings and, you name it, I love it. Mostly, I just love being immersed in the world Mr.
Wells created in that book. It is such a genuine joy to me that I am always surprised
when someone else expresses anything but appreciation for the book. But, something
other than appreciation is what my neighbor recently expressed.
Gretchen’s home is on the lot just east of mine and her door front faces the next street
over. Our lots are separated by a line of arborvitaes. She is a charming, beautiful and
intelligent young high school teacher married to an equally pleasant young attorney. My
wife often sees her as they work in their respective gardens. I seldom see her, but,
yesterday I bumped into her on my afternoon walk. She bid me a good afternoon then
recognized me as her neighbor and stopped to chat.
She saw I was reading War of the Worlds. To my surprise she said that it was heavy
reading. I told her that just the contrary was so, that while the language and style is, of
course, nineteenth century, the story itself is simply a Science fiction invasion classic and
not cerebral at all.
In fact, I was reading it for need of that simplicity of plot and theme. I had been lately
absorbed in readings that addressed the theological and political future of the world and
the unavoidable victory of tyrannical socialist and communist governments over the United
States and, consequently, the end of the concept of “free nations.”
I suppose you could impose a metaphor of communist conquest on the novel, but I doubt
Mr. Wells had any such intent. The outlook for the United States today seems so bleak
that I began reading War of the Worlds simply to escape my own melancholy. I knew in
that fictional world, at least, the invasion fails.
I also noticed something else: I’m up to chapter sixteen and I realized I have had a
wonderful time reading the book despite that it is only in the last few chapters that, by
today’s standards, some serious action has occurred. Again, it just takes a little patience.
I am so tired of reading or hearing even well-intentioned academics berate great writers
of the past as verbose, blusterous or as bombastic and their styles as grandiloquent and
anachronistic. These academics need to just shut up and read. Learn to listen.
Perhaps they might actually learn something themselves, other that how to denigrate the
men and woman of antiquity who have bequeathed to us the miracle that is Western
civilization—the miracle that they have squandered and now seek to destroy. Our cultural
heritage is staggeringly beautiful, but sometimes a reader has to make an effort.
Sometimes a reader has to give themselves a little time to adjust to the author’s style.
Just as you might take the time to understand someone from another culture in our time;
take the time to understand a writer from this culture but from an earlier time. Are we so
sure that what contemporary writers have to say is more rewarding, insightful and
relevant?
Find the things within the classic text you are reading that are interesting—the images are
always a treat or the intellectual processes of the author or the historical or cultural
information to be gleaned or even the fashions or technology of the time, can all be
revealed by a careful writer like Wells. Meanwhile the human mind gets the time it needs
to build new paths to enlightenment and you learn about another time.
Where would we be if anyone who didn’t understand a poem or story at first reading
dismissed it as not worth the time? Actually, today, that’s just what they do; so, I
suppose we would be exactly where we are: in a country that is throwing away the
greatest governing system a people have ever known, where academia is filled with
cheap criminals using students as pawns to achieve power and a leadership that is bullied
by the iconoclastic dolts to lazy and corrupt to earn what they want, as so void of
principle or decency that they manipulate their students and abuse their position of trust
to achieve their own ends.
But these prose and poetry styles developed in a great and literate culture that the
academics have let deteriorate to the embarrassment it is today.
But, what once was considered great will become a delight if you will put your anger on
hold. Give yourself the chance to enjoy it instead of distaining something that doesn’t
conform immediately to your expectations. Learn something new. Some of us are so busy
racing through the words looking for the first head to be hacked off or breast to pop out
of a torn bodice, we miss the real beauty and intent of the writer.
I don’t have anything against heads getting hacked off, and I quite enjoy breasts popping
out of bodices, but those kinds of things are unlikely to occur in a nineteenth century
science fiction novel. Especially a novel that Wells knew would be much read and loved
by the young or the young at heart..
The intelligent, kind and personable young women, Gretchen, made an analysis of this
great book without giving herself a chance to get to know it. We have been so
indoctrinated into an impatient, critical, even cruel and antagonistic attitude towards the
literary style of the classics that we rob ourselves of the great enjoyment and intellectual
expansion we can attain through a patient listening to the works of these genuine giants
of literature from our past.
The eyes of this girl bespeak an alert and curious intellect and the conversations I have
had with her reflect her wholesome outlook. She would probably love H.G. Wells if
someone had not told her to be impatient with its language.
Chapter
There are always people who don’t like the way the world is set up and they think they
can do a better job. They believe patriarchies are unjust and they think belief in a Hebrew
and/or Christian God is harmful; they don’t like the traditional family unit and despise the
capitalistic system and many other things that they believe are sub sets of the Western
culture.
As it happens I turned to a major church after experiencing the criminality of academics at
UWM. I was active in that church for over ten years and I was a high priest in their
bishopric when I left.
My experience is the higher you go in the hierarchies of an organized religion, the more
you meet religious “leaders” that are just as corrupt as the secular “leaders.” In fact, they
are possibly even more culpable because they commit their crimes in the name of
Chrisianity.
I don’t know if there is a Judeo-Christian God. I do know organized religion has perverted
Christianity to the point that it is barely recognizable from the religion that built this country.
The judgmental, holier than thou hierarchies that see themselves as floating around
somewhere above everyone else is as repulsive to the free man as the communists. And
if a Judeo-Christian God exists, they are repulsive to Him as well.
Humility, forgiveness, concern for others—the poor, the sick, the imprisoned—charity and
peace and poverty are the values Christians are supposed to revere as they make their
way through this life. That’s why the dregs of Europe and the African slaves, under a
declaration of independence were able to bond and build the greatest country on earth.
They were daily admonished to set aside worldly things and seek to do the will of God—
put the welfare of each other before our own. Those are the principles that made us
strong. Neither the greedy capitalists or the power hungry communists reflect those
guidelines.
So what does this have to do with literature. The truth is every word you utter, every
sentence spoken or in print is influenced by the Old Testament. And every shred of
literature to this day has it as foundation the Bible. Like it or not, hate it or love it, that is
the reality.
Ironically, if they actually read more, they would know communism can be said to be a
Judeo Christian concept. In fact, everything we think is influenced by the Old Testament.
So, if you are going to understand what you are doing, you have to read the Old
Testament. Once you have done that, you might as well read the New Testament then
you will understand why we have built a world on this Western foundation. And why
America thrived before the communists arrived.
If you want the benefits of civilization, you need structure and a foundation. As
foundations go, the Western culture has produced some very humane concepts that man
did not consider before the morality of the Bible came to the world. But you have to read
it before you know that.
It is obvious that some of the most vehement critics of the Bible have never read it. It is
an infinite source of strength and comfort and pragmatic guidance if you are willing to
open your mind to it. That’s why tyrants always outlaw it. They want the people afraid
and looking to the state for guidance and protection. Unfortunately, all the state usually
provides is cold, impersonal tyranny.
Tyrants lose interest in the people that put them in power as soon as they have secured
the power. And where they deviate from the Bible in their ideas for the distribution of
wealth is CHOISE, we have our free will. The communists always want to force people
and always have to kill and hurt people for the good of the people. And, of course, they
will always decide who needs killing.
Listening to prose of the past is similar to the things we can gain by a patent listening to
poetry of the past. There are many political reasons that academics want you to leave
the beauty and nobility of Western culture in the past. For the most part they have spent
decades creating a false history and vilifying our heritage. But, they know it doesn’t take
long for anyone who is paying attention to literature to realize we are being lied to and
manipulated by the academic elite into accepting a false reality of their making in order to
overthrow the government.
Today’s academia and the literary and artistic community are involved more in the
overthrow of what they perceive as an unjust capitalistic system than in a truthful and
revealing literary or artistic effort or in teaching us about our literary heritage. Although, it
is imperative that you realize, a huge number these “revolutionaries” that hate the rich
seem to use their political power to grow rich themselves. So, it is not so much that they
hate injustice and the unfair distribution of wealth, it is that they want the wealth someone
else had acquired to be funneled into their own personal coffers.
Most of what is written today falls more in the realm of propaganda and indoctrination
than what we once called literature. As with Western religion, there is an effort to
discourage the study of Western prose or poetry of the past that does not advance the
socialist agenda. I believe those that do this are unfit to teach and should be imprisoned
not paid, I think you would feel the same way if you took the time to learn of your heritage.
While I had a few terrific teachers on college, most of the 1980s University of Wisconsin
English and Journalism departments were controlled by angry feminists that vented their
disgust and hatred for the Dead White Males and the traditional prose and poetry many
of us grew up with.
It is unconscionable to deny students access to this precious literary fortress filled with
the gold of writers past. I find these academics arrogant and despicable.
As hard as I have tried to block our the memory of these “teachers,” they linger and lurk
and slither through my mind like the poisonous water moccasins of a Floridian swamp—
hate-filled iconoclasts I once trusted and listened to intently, now deliver their venom
should I encounter them as I wade through my consciousness.
Chapter
For the most part, what I have said so far would be considered prose. Although, I
sneaked in an extemporaneous poem in iambic tetrameter so we could discuss that later.
Some might not agree with the writer, me. They might call what I’ve written so far
something a lot less polite, but most would admit it is prose none the less.
Like poetry, prose is a structure in lines. But the lines are not relevant to the affects of
the poem. Prose is read left to right and the lines continue to the end of a space then
begin again just below the last line and back at the left of the page. This pattern continues
until the end of the paragraph.
The words in the sentences represent something in the mind of the writer that presumably
is similar to something in the mind of the reader. All of the words together create a
thought which is ended with an end punctuation such as a period, (.) a question mark (?)
or exclamation mark (!). There are several other punctuation marks that help
communicate an idea or ideas within in a sentence such as a comma, semi colon, colon,
ellipses, apostrophe and quotation marks.
It is easy to find a punctuation page and become familiar with them. You can rely on
context to signal the reader but punctuation helps the reader.
I advise you to take a few minutes; write down the punctuation marks most common;
there’s only a dozen or so; if you learn one a day, in two weeks you’ll know them and can
begin to use them. It is easier on your reader and after a while they come in very handy
for a writer as well..
The use of punctuation can be emotive. Commas used to invert sentences, for example,
can make them a little more suspenseful—turn journalistic prose into poetry: Compare
these two sentences with the same words and essentially the same meaning.
Poetic style: “Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred.”
Objective journalistic style: “Six hundred rode into the valley of death.”
The same words; the same idea; but, if you “invert” the order and add punctuation, the
idea has a different affect on the reader. It’s more fun, well more fun for everyone but the
six hundred. They probably don’t care too much; any way you say it, they end up in the
valley of death.
The journalist would go on to tell us Who, what, when, where, why and how--again,
perhaps a more informative style, but less suspenseful and emotive. While the poet may
ignore the facts and focus on the futility of war or the unquestioning obedience of these
men or the courage or whatever is the poem’s theme.
I make the distinction of Journalistic style rather than just prose as opposed to poetry
because the inverted sentence is a way to make your prose more suspenseful and
exciting as well as your poetry. However, when you are trying to be as factual and clear
as a journalist you would usually be strait forward with the facts.
A fictional story or poem may or may not be factually accurate, although usually the writer
is trying to represent some kind of human truth. In that sense, I have always felt fiction
contains more truth than fact. The fiction writer does not have as much to fear as the
journalist who will often face legal threats or threats of a an illegal nature if he or she
makes someone feel threatened.
The ideas in sentences are united to support of the paragraph’s topic. The paragraphs
then combine to create the written piece. Usually, there is an introductory paragraph that
tells you the purpose of the written work. Often, it sets the tone and tells readers why the
writer feels it is worth reading and the purpose of the piece. Some people would call this
a hook. Today, the thinking is that the reader’s interest must be captured close to the
beginning no matter what you write.
But, if you have patient listeners and you have an interesting prose style with lots of
concrete words, good description and a few inverted sentences, a reader may enjoy
what you have written and trust that you are going somewhere that is worth the wait.
That is the kind of thing you will have to decide for yourself as you develop a prose style.
In fiction the first paragraph can also set the story with some exposition that reveals how
the characters got to where they now are and sometimes where the story is gong and
why the story is going in the direction it is. But that kind of introductory paragraph is much
more common in non fiction and is usually followed by one or more paragraphs in the
body and a concluding paragraph.
But there can be many variations of this structure depending upon the intent of the writer,
e.g. a journalist would begin with the most important elements of his story: He uses a
Who, When, Where, What, Why and how style in the first paragraph or two so we get the
idea quickly, then he adds possibly more complex or thorough information but of
diminishing interest to the average reader. Often the in-depth text is on another page.
Journalists were once thought of as watchdogs for the people, but today’s socialist press
is more a tool for the state. The state will make certain the headlines and first paragraphs
are consistent with socialist efforts to seize and maintain power. Moreover, stories will be
run in a way that serves the government and is detrimental to voices of freedom. That’s
the reason the government is trying to take control of the internet—one of he few places
left that contains a genuine marketplace of ideas.
Most people no longer believe that journalists are objective, unbiased reporters acting in
the best interests of their readership. We have come to accept a journalist’s role as
propagandists for their respective political patron--usually communist or socialist
controlled entities. Since the government is now attempting to shut down any opposition
press, we will probably soon lose a free press and the concept of free speech will be
become an anachronous concept until freedom fighters take back the United States of
America.
Chapter
Poetry often uses lines, as does prose, but while a prose line ends simply because it has
gone as far as it can go on the page, a poet uses lines for many reasons. The lines he
uses are often organized into stanzas, which some people call poem paragraphs. The
lines can end at the end of a sentence or the poet can use enjambment and run a
sentence over to the next line. It depends upon what the poet is trying to do.
The first thing almost everyone talks about is concrete and abstract words. And it is as
good a place to start as any. Although, it is important that you feel free when you are
learning about poetry; you do not have to start at the beginning and plod through a
anything you might find. Find whatever strikes your interest and learn as little or as much
as you like. Don’t let it become a difficult burden or become discouraged if it seems
difficult at first. If you just keep browsing, the next time you see the same thing you may
wonder what you ever thought was hard about it.
Concrete words denote something literal we share some palpable reference for in our
minds. You have a very specific reference in your mind for concrete words. Remember,
words are just sounds we have assigned to things we have sensed in the world. There
are concrete things such as snake or water or tree. And abstract things like communism,
tyranny, arrogance, academia, suffering and government.
Sometimes concrete words are just that, words that refer us to something very specific
like canary. If I am writing about songbirds, then canary means just that. But if I am
writing a detective story, I might say “To the delight of Detective Flannigan, the hired gun
sang like a canary.” We write with concrete words that call forth images that remind us
of something else, probably more abstract words.
That would be a figure of speech. In this case we are not saying the hired gun pleased
the policeman with an entertaining bird imitation; we are saying he gave a lot of
information, perhaps informed on his cohorts, like a frightened little bird.
Figures of speech that use like or as are similes. They say one thing is similar to another.
A Metaphor is a figure of speech that replaces the thing it is describing.. For example if
you were one of the thief’s cohorts, you might say, “The bulls beat a confession out of the
kid.” We know a group of bulls did not assault a young man to gain information. But in this
case we not saying the police are like bulls; we are saying they are bulls. It is a stronger
assertion and less able to be removed.
If something is similar, it is not quite the same so can be something else as well, but if a
policeman is a bull, that is what we’re saying he reminds us of in the world. Not like a bull,
but a big, stupid male animal that attacks and scares people without thinking. Both of
these are common figures of speech in a genre. But unless you are doing a character
that uses clichés, you want to come up with your own more interesting figures of speech.
We also use concrete words as symbols of abstractions. Common literary symbols are
the rose for love, the black bird for evil, an eagle for freedom, a star for a sheriff, a tank
for war i.e. something concrete that stands for something abstract, often it is something
we connect with the abstraction e.g. a scull and crossbones for death. There is also
similar imagery used to replace things or people we know. Metonymy is something we
associate with something else. “The White House” is the executive branch of our
government. “The Crown” as a monarh or our “hired gun” as a contract killer.
Similar is a synecdoche that uses some part of a thing to refer to it, a pilot might call his
airplane his wings. The most common I’ve read is “my wheels” for a vehicle. In English
Literature if they invite someone to “tea” you are not just inviting them to sit and drink tea.
Tea is often a synecdoche for an informal dinner the way we say “let’s grab lunch.”
I don’t know how old I was, but I know I was prepubescent the day my I told my
grandmother about my concern for the British diet. I thought all the British did was invite
friends to guzzle tea, maybe add something called a “crumpet” if they were lucky. She
loved tea and drank it often, but I did not. It was a bland and disgusting thing to me and I
thought those poor people should at least get some bacon and eggs once and a while.
I was taken aback by how hard she was laughing, and she told me she was not laughing
at my question, but at how intensely serious I was about the whole matter. She then
made matters worse by telling me the English actually ate fish with their eggs. The whole
affair made such an impression upon me that here it is a half century later and it is one of
my fondest memories.
Incidentally, we often confuse i.e. with e.g. I remember it because I think of i.e. as an
acronym for “in essence.” It’s not really but that helps me distinguish between the two. e.
g. means “example.” Whenever I see e.g. I sound out e.g. as egg and then lengthen it to
egg sample which sounds like example. However since a lot of people don’t know the
difference; I don’t use either of them unless I’m really crunched for space or time.
Well, I was digressing there, but that is what I decided to do—take the narrative
wherever it goes rather than list topics them one by one explain what I know about them.
So, let’s go back to the word “snake.” It also has a very strong connotation. It connotes
potential danger and evil to many other than the dedicated naturalist. If you were trying to
be even more concrete or specific you might say copperhead instead of “snake” or
swamp instead of “water” or weeping willow instead of “tree.”
A copperhead connotes more danger because we know they are a poisonous species. A
swamp connotes murky, sometimes dangerous waters with very scary things like hungry
alligators and poisonous snakes and a weeping willow not only literally says a crying tree,
but we tend to associate it with a spooky or unhappy setting.
Not always, I recall the rustling of a weeping willow near a pond one summer day the
spot where my girlfriend and I were having a picnic. It is a very pleasant personal
experience.
But, when I wrote: “I have tried to block out the memory of these teachers, but still they
linger and lurk and slither through my mind like the poisonous water moccasins of a murky
Floridian swamp.” I used snake and swamp because those concrete words have more
impact than if I said “the memory of those teachers still bothers me today.”
Some might say it is melodrama. I disagree. In any event, it illustrates connotation and
denotation. Even linger, lurk and slither have a strong connotation. They only denote
hanging out, maybe looking around and moving quietly. But they connote something much
more sinister.
Poets generally like to use a lot of sensory words that can be seen, heard, smelled,
touched and tasted. Some, such as the ever popular object of art the apple can bring to
most minds each of these senses. We all have seen an apple, but we have also heard
the crunch of that first bite, smelled the release of those apple molecules as we bit in to
it, touched the smooth cool skin if we got it our of the fridge, or felt the sticky wax if we
ate it off a warm super market shelf, and we have savored a sweet or tart taste
depending on the name of apple. A “Delicious” brand apple would be sweet, a Macintosh
not so sweet. That’s why naming the apple in a poem helps the imagery in your reader’s
mind.
Usually we don’t think in terms of all five senses at once. It depends on the context. We
usually only hear in our mind’s ear, so to speak, a bell when the writer brings it up, but
maybe we see too if the writer says it is a church bell.. In our mind’s eye and ear we
refer to a day in our past: we drive up the street towards church one Sunday morning in
July.
Let me interject here. I wanted to stay away from lists and labels and headings and just
let this read in a more relaxed conversational tone. But I am going to label the next few
pages the sounds of poetry and prose so you can listen a little more to the sounds as you
read a little narrative I’m going to write.
In a narrative, whether you’re discussing prose or narrative poetry, you are telling a story.
The story has characters and plot. I am going to put sound in the story because we are
thinking about the sounds in prose and poetry. That might make it sound a little childlike
because we associate written out sounds like “bam!” or “ratatatatatat” with children’s
books or comic books.
First, let the child in you be free to enjoy anything you read. Second, be patient; I’m not
being condescending; I am trying to illustrate how words have various sounds that poets
use, sometimes poets use words more for those sounds than the actually denotation of
the words. This may be very obvious to the advanced reader, but many of us read
without paying much attention to the sounds—at least not consciously.
I am using the second person pronoun “you” because I want you to imagine yourself in
this scene of the narrative. To make it easy on myself, I am going to base the story on an
actual incident in my youth. Since I am 59 years old, I am setting this in 1968.
The window’s open in your lime green, 1967 Mercury Cougar with the black vinyl roof,
black interior and bucket seats. Ding Dong. You stare at the tolling church bell as you
down shift that four on the floor and you pretend to ignore that Black Plymouth Fury you
are pulling along side at the light on the corner; that rich kid from Whitefish Bay is driving
the Fury, the loud ‘vroom, vroom’ of his engine revving is the challenge.
Exhaust shoots out the tail pipe as pistons slide and valves open and shut and rockers
rock and the cam shaft spins reaching an rpm that makes the car ready for—Ding dong—
that clutch to close and the rubber burn as both cars scream off the line.
It’s tempting. It could be an opportunity for glory. Ding Dong, You look again at the church
bell a half block away and on the left side of the street, you see below on the steps,
smiling in the sunshine, Carla Olivero and Marge Harris. As usual, Carla is the sexiest
dressed virgin in Milwaukee.
She’s wearing that red ruffled peasant blouse, shoulders out, and enough cleavage
exposed to send a little blood—Ding Dong--to your crotch from a half block away. It tops
her black paten leather mini skirt and red fishnet stockings. Her right leg is stepping up
and you think you see a flash of golden brown thigh between the dark red tops of the
nylons and her black garter belt.
She seems to be looking back at you and laughing, although since Marge is looking at her
and laughing too, you assume it is an over active imagination that says they have even
see you yet. You think Carla is really laughing with Marge. Ding Dong.
It doesn’t really matter. Everyone knows Carla is all show and no go. In fact, Mat
Dembrowski once put a rolled up sock in his pants and then swiveled his hips near her
face as he moved past her seat in Sunday school. Her eyes went wide and so much
white showed you forgot she had an iris and pupil, especially when they rolled up behind
her top eyelid. She didn’t scream or anything, but she was breathing real funny just after
Mat passed her.
You were looking right at her when her eyes rolled up and she slid out of her chair like a
basted turkey from the hands of a six-year-old girl. That’s a personal simile that reflects
an incident one Thanksgiving that happened to one of your five sisters.
The point is there is no time to stop it. Ding Dong. Carla suddenly slid off the folding chair
and her body crumpled with a thud onto the floor, sending two empty chairs in front of her
clanging and clattering into the front row all while those around her were leaping up to
make their unsuccessful catch.
They revived her and walked her out. A little while later they came back for Mat. Since
that day. As he left the room, he tucked in his white shirt tail that had come out when he
desperately pulled out the balled up socks, and pulled the bottom of his sweater vest
over his waist. Mat will not talk about it, but you noticed he always was very courteous to
Carla after that.
Ding Dong. Now your wondering if you can wind up that little 289 enough for your
Mercury to take the heavy Plymouth off the line. You’ve tested the set of wheels your
driving many times before Your car is light and you decide you’ll be first off the line and
have a moment of glory. But, your little Cougar doesn’t have the power; once the tires
stop screaming you’ll barely get across the street, the smell of burning rubber filling your
nostrils, when the grill of the Plymouth will blast through the smoke from your burning tires
and pass your Cougar like it was a kitten.
My God, by the time you are both in front of the girls, he’ll be three car lengths ahead of
you. It’s not skill or heart; it’s just physics. He has too much horse power. The cops drive
those Furys; his old man works for the mayor. He probably got a deal on the Fury in
exchange for the city buying their fleet from Plymouth. That’s the way they are in
government: it’s not enough they already have more than anyone else, they have to cheat
on top of it. Although, this guy doesn’t really seem like such a bad kid.
Right now, that’s not important. You and him both know he has more power behind him,
but, to the girls, your shining little lime green Couger looks prettier and more sporty than
his bulky Plymouth. The problem is you can’t tell from here if the girls are looking at you
two or not, They may not even see you beat him off the line, They may look just as he is
passing you across the street.
There’s no glory in that. And from the way Marge talked to you at the last church dance
Saturday, it was pretty clear she wouldn’t be fainting if you could get her to take a walk
with you in the woods at the Fourth of July picnic. No, things are on track, you have a
date with Marge and there’s been some interesting promises implied—which is all a good
church girl can do and preserver her rep.
This would be a terrible time to be humiliated by a rich kid in a Plymouth. What was he
doing down here anyway. You look over and he is waving at Carla and she is waving
back. Maybe that’s what Carla is saving herself for. You don’t know, but you have plans
for Marge and you’re not letting this guy use you to score Carla. That kind of sacrifice is
part of the code, but it only goes for buds, not rich kids from the North Shore. Right now
you have the advantage and you are not throwing it away.
No you’ll go to church as planned. You rev your engine lightly, as if to accept his
challenge, but when the light changes, you flip on your signal and turn left so you can
drive around through the back alley and park in the church parking lot. The Plymouth
squeals down the street and by the time he realizes you turned off, he’s in front of the
girls, looking like a goof ball that just wants attention.
You walk into church smiling and say your good mornings like you’re as innocent as a
new born. People are coming in the front complaining about the fool screaming down the
street on a beautiful Sunday morning, putting people at risk and all. You walk up to Carla
and Marge. Marge turns and is looking straight in your eyes as she is saying to Carla,
“Yes, it was almost as if someone egged him on, then turned off at the last minute. Carla
laughs but she has no idea what the hell Marge is talking about.
Marge smiles as she passes you and reminds you she will see you at the picnic. Nothing
much gets past that Marge; you decide to let her choose when and where it will happen
between the two of you. Mostly, because you know if you try to decide for her, it won’t
happen. You really like Marge.”
Lets think about some of the more obvious sounds in the scene—especially the
onomatopoeia like “vroom, revved. Ding Dong, thud, squeal, clatter and clang. What
makes the words sound like the actual event? One answer would be that we have all
heard an engine rev or a bell peal or tires squeal and we are referencing that sound in our
minds. But, there is more to it than that, especially with these words. The letters
contribute sounds that sound like the actual event. The letters get their sounds from the
way we pronounce them. In this instance, as is very often the case in poetry, we are
listening not only to the references we can recall, but to the sounds we are hearing at that
moment if we want to really experience some of the fun of poetry.
Recall the vowel scale we talked about: the “oo” sound in vroom is the lowest on the
scale. We also heard it in boom. Don’t forget we are talking about the vowel sound not
the visual appearance of the vowel. The word vacuum has the same sound despite that it
uses the long “u.” The short sound of “u” comes nearer to the middle of the scale just
below a short sound “a,” “e” and “i.,” that are also in the middle of the scale, respectively.
The highest sounds are the long “i,” “a” and “e” sound such as in “drive or fry” and “faint
or bake” or as in “squeal or beep.”
The consonants also have sounds. And, when you are listening, those sounds contribute
to your enjoyment of prose or poetry. In “vroom” the “m” lingers on just as an engine
would die down as it lost the energy from that brief acceleration out of gear. Think of the
word “hum.” Hear how the “m” lingers to achieve that vibrancy. You often will see an m,
n, or z for example, in a poem about bees. Listen to the word “bees.” It has the highest
pitch vowel sound then the “z” sound. If you talk about buzzing bees, it is so close to the
sound in nature, you might want to run before you are stung.
There are many sounds to listen for in words, especially in poetry. Think of “kick” that
starts and ends with that hard cacophonous sound. Actually, cacophony does the same
thing with the “c” sound and actually means that sound. I think of “clap.” It has that hard
“c” sound from the back of the throat and also that percussive “p” sound that comes when
you open your lips and allow the escape of air you have pressurized in your mouth. You
make a “b” sound by the subtle reduction in pressure. The “t” and “d” take a little work
with the tip of the tongue allowing the air to escape. Oddly enough, the word tongue itself
begins with the tip of the tongue allowing air to escape, creating its “t” sound and ends
with another percussive “g” sound that uses the back of the tongue to allow the air to
escape. And, speaking of air that escapes, listen to the word “escape” to hear the
breathy hissing “s” sound of air escaping and the final percussive sound at the end when
the air escapes your lips.
It may sound silly but the “s” sound can seem so salient it subverts the prose and
sometimes some listeners unconsciously focus so much on the sound instead of the story
that some writers seek to subdue or even censor the “s” sound from their stuff.
It makes the paragraph hiss like a deflating tire finally falling flat. The letter “f” is also a
breathy letter as are the “sh, ch and th” sounds.
You should also pay attention to letters with liquidity such as l, r and w. These have
resonance like n, m, and z but a more subtle flowing, musical quality. Again, it seems to
be about less pressure in the pronunciation.
You may disagree. Why not play with the pronunciation and pay attention to what you are
doing with your mouth. Remember, it is appropriate, some say necessary, to read poetry
aloud. After all, verse began as a vocal art, a way to spread the news or hand narratives
down from one generation to the next. That’s one reason we hear so much alliteration
and rhyme in early verse, to help people recall the stories. It can be great fun.
That’s the most important thing: have fun; we’re all learning. I am just trying to throw out a
few things many average readers struggle with when they read poetry. But it is important
that you don’t take this too seriously and forget any negative experience you associate
with Western Literature.
I have had the negative experiences with academics familiar with these elements of prose
and poetry that use this knowledge to inflate their egos at the expense of their students
or to validate their socialist theories. But, it is not that big of a deal.
Mark Twain said, “An idiot is someone who doesn’t know something you learned ten
minutes ago.” And that, to me, tells us about the academic “elite.” They have a little
information that is no longer common knowledge, so they think it somehow elevates them.
The truth is “teaching” elevates them, wallowing in their own excretions just makes them
the type of animal that wallows.
Once we all shared this knowledge, but the academic deconstructionists have so
destroyed our ability to listen to and appreciate the literary heritage of the Western
Culture, they now are the only people who even have the essential listening skills to
appreciate it. But that is so easy to fix, all we have to do is listen and we too will hear.
It is admittedly unfortunate that today most of us get our first exposure to “literature” in
academia. These mind molesters have become gatekeepers to this amazing world of
insight and beauty. But, please know that these academic do not own the literary world
and with a little effort the damage they do can be overcome. I promise you it is worth the
effort.
Speaking of “listening,” now is as good a time as any to bring up the debate on the
relative merit of meter. Many people today are very put off by meter in a poem. However,
for now, let’s just leave all these literary giants of today to argue about things like
metered poetry and free verse. We are trying to understand our cultural heritage--
Western Literature.
There are many ways to enjoy a poem. We may be looking to unravel; the mystery, the
great insights, enjoy the imagery or take comfort in how we identify with a situation or
feeling or philosophy that we may share with the persona in a poem. But to truly
experience and enjoy a poem, we should at least pay attention to what the rhythm feels
like to us, including the formal meter if it exists in the work.
It’s also possible we wish to learn more about the people of the time the poem was
written. Often we gain insight from poetry that history has hidden from us. Often
Communist politicians are too stupid to understand what a poet is saying so great insight
will slip through the inevitable censorship that tyrannical governments impose on art and
literature. Today, the National Endowment for the Arts would more appropriately be
called the National Endowment for Communist Propaganda. Please don’t let yourself fall
into some pointless debate about outdated style. Just try hard to experience the poetry.
The least of your worries should be knowing too much about out history.
In fact, that might be another distinction between poetry and prose—we experience a
poem but we read prose to glean information. We have been taught to read prose as
quickly and efficiently as possible. The line length is from margin to margin in prose and
the sentences justify on the left and wrap around on the right and end wherever they end.
There is rhythm but usually not formal meter or measured units.
The rhythm of prose is more in the varied sentence lengths, short or long vowels in the
words, repeated sentence beginnings, things like that. Certainly, the current trend is to
minimize and use simple sentences, and that’s fine if it achieves whatever you are trying
to achieve—usually please your communist professor who could care less so long as you
are willing to scrawl it on a sign and burn it in the street or the self-satisfied twit at some
in-vogue fagazine that likes simple sentences so its pretentious professional readership
can know how much pubic hair they should shave off and what are the “in” products to
use to do it.
If that’s what they want, give it to them. If in your heart, you like a more literary and
traditional style, read it; savor it; enjoy it but don’t bother arguing with them about it; there
is no right or wrong here, they don’t know what they don’t know. and it is not worth your
degree or your job trying to convince the “elite” that they are missing something great.
Historically, meter has always played a large part of defining a poem’s structure, even if it
is the lack of meter as in free verse. Free verse, poetry with little or no meter, has great
popularity right now. But it is not really “free” of anything except the requirement that you
conform to some formal structure. It does not mean you are free to be stupid; to write
whatever you want and call it poetry. Here again, there usually is some kind of rhythm.
Like prose, it uses things like assonance and also consonance. As poetry it has the
added element of line length and pauses to create interesting rhythm. It can end a
sentence at the end of the line or use enjambment, which is simply ending the line before
the sentence is complete and ending the sentence later in the poem—often in the next
line, but it can be anywhere down the poem right down to the end of the poem.
Free verse is very popular today. If that is so, you may ask, and since I don’t really
understand meter, why should I worry about it? Why don’t I just write in free verse. My
answer to that would be that it is easier for the beginner to write something worthwhile in
meter. If you write in the easiest meter, iambic tetrameter, which is simply four Iambic
feet, even a poem that has little to offer has, at least, a little beat to it. A bad free verse
is just bad. Most people won’t know it from prose, and as prose, it usually is even worse.
Meter works by putting stressed and unstressed syllables in a pattern. Placing stress or
accent on a syllable is something we all do when we speak. If I say I am upset because
I don’t know meter or how to scan poetry. The accent is on the second syllable in upSET.
In this case, the word is an iambic foot or a unit with the first syllable unstressed and the
second syllable stressed. If we had three more units or feet with the stress or accent on
the second syllable in a line of poetry, it would be four feet and called a line of iambic
tetrameter.
Iambic pentameter, five feet with first an unstressed and then a stressed syllable is the
most well known. Shakespeare and a long list of others wrote in this meter. If you read
enough of it, you will begin to easily recognize it. Until then just say the line in your head
or aloud and try to scan to determine the stresses yourself. Check yourself with the
dictionary. The iambic foot is the basis for all the other feet. They just switch the stress
around to the first syllable stressed and second unstressed, called a “trochee” or add to
one or both of the stresses. The list is: the iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee,
pyrrhic, amphimacer or cretic, amphibrach, minor ionic (pyrrhic + spondee), major ionic
(spondee + pyrrhic).
For example, if I say the game was won by the lowest ranking team in the league and the
upset nearly bankrupt a bookmaker who had allowed a huge last minute bet on the long
shot. The accent is on the first syllable in UPset. In this case, the same word has a
different accent. The accent can depend on definition or even context.
It us said that poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. If poetry is to prose as dancing
is to walking, then there must be some formal structure to the poetry that defines the
dance we are doing. Both of these arts move in time. Unlike a painting or a sculpture that
might freeze a moment in time, poetry, like dance, has movement in time. How it moves
through time is part of what we appreciate about these arts. Which reminds me of a story:
When I was about eleven or twelve years old, I was making donuts with my grandmother.
As J dropped the circle of flour and sugar into the bubbling grease I asked if she read the
mimeographed sheet I had left on the table last night.
The administration was going to begin Friday night dances for sixth, seventh and eighth
graders at Dover Street Elementary School in Milwaukee. That was before the
communists had seized American schools and the administrators were still trying to
provide working-class children with an education that would help them adjust to American
society, not indoctrinate them into an overthrow of the government.
I really wanted to go; I had gone to my Catholic friend’s Christian Youth Organization
(CYO) dances and had a great time. They had balloons and yellow and blue crepe strung
from the ceiling. There were games like a bean bag toss at a board that has a clown with
c with a hole where the mouth was supposed to be, a big red nose pained above the
mouth and wide eyes with long black big lashes. Crescents of bright yellow hair streaked
out above the clowns white ears and a beneath a brown derby. I remember it well
because I played bean bag toss while others danced. And dance those kids did, they
looked like a bunch of Catholic Indians the way they were a hoping and hollering and
jumping around to that music. I was having fun and since I was a guest, it didn’t bother
me too much that I didn’t dance.
But now these were my pubic school classmates and friends. It would be embarrassing if
I didn’t dance. I was afraid to go because I had no clue how to dance. It was one thing
to sit on the sidelines with a bunch of strangers, but I had gone to school with this Dover
Street group since kindergarten. I wondered if anyone, even my grandmother, could help
me solve the dance dilama. Just as I was wondering if they would have a bean bag toss,
my grandmother said she could teach me a basic waltz and that would carry me through.
Well, this was the pre-Beatles age with recordings of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and
Chubby Checker’s “twist.” The King was still Elvis, and I didn’t know how something that
sounded as old-fashioned as the waltz would work with music from “the killer” Jerry Lee
or ole Swivel-hips Elvis, but she was my grandma and I trusted her.
So I learned the basic three steps, and I got so comfortable with them I was doing some
swirls and a few other things she laughingly called my “fancy dance” maneuvers. I had a
lot of fun learning this with my grandmother. And, although it was only a basic step, it also
taught me to use the four parts of my foot—the heel, the toe, the ball and the flat.
None the less, I felt I was so bad that I would still probably still be humiliated at the
dance. But, I really wanted to go. In those days the boys and girls used separate
playgrounds and we didn’t get together that often. Our interest in girls was just beginning
to blossom and so too were the girls that would be at the dance.
At least they appeared to be filling out. To demonstrate our prepubescent worldliness,
there was much whispered speculation by the boys on how much of the womanhood
exhibited by torpedo training bras and tight sweaters was supplied by the Kleenex
Company.
Research in this area could be dangerous. We devised various maneuvers where an
elbow or shoulder might accidentally brush a girl in such a way as to determine whether
the impressive filling had the lack of resilience and buoyancy that was the unmistakable
shortcoming of wadded Kleenex. The goal was that the subject never knew she had
participated in the study. And, since bumping into Kleenex caused no pain, few ever knew.
To our credit, most of us never really went through with it anyway and our reported
results were woefully skewed by our desire to be part of the gang without hurting the girl
who had just consented to the dance and given you the two most amazing minutes of
your life.
Usually we returned to the pack and announced with the pride of a man who had
accomplished his mission and increased his worldly knowledge at the same time, our
certainty that our young lady was not putting up a false front. Although, I do not know to
what end we made these investigations. I can think of no instance where possessing this
information, true or false, made even the smallest difference in our behavior towards one
of our classmates.
The truth was, we were all scared witless and lived in terror that one of the young ladies
would express any kind of distain for us, our appearance, deplorable dancing skills or our
ballroom etiquette or lack there of and we rarely reported any negativity and then only
defensively.
Anyway, my grandmother was right again. It turned out those three steps were three
steps more than any other boys at the dance had learned. I dominated the floor that night
and the line of girls I got to dance with exceeded my wildest expectations. I even got to
dance with some of the older seventh and eight grade girls that, here-to-fore, I had only
been allowed to admire from a distance. That night I was the coolest cat in the entire
sixth grade of Dover Street Elementary School.
Moreover, just knowing those how to put pressure on my feet made me appear as if I
had doing the modern dances for decades or perhaps developed the twist myself.
Compared to the uncontrolled gyrations of most of the 10-12 year old set at Dover, I was
really cooking and getting attention from all those older and wiser and certainly more
bumpy eighth-grade women. I informed them that they looked “charming” as I had often
read men in novels refer to women who were having that kind of affect on them.
Of course, in those days, we would not have had a clue what to do should we ever
actually win over the passions of our dream girls, but that was not the point. The point
was that we could get a girl, or at least we could a girl to accept our invitation to dance
without them throwing up on our shoes.
Anyway, my point here is that sometimes just knowing a few of the good old-fashioned
basics can put you way ahead of the pack—especially with those older and wiser women.
