Poetry and grammar and usage (2.11.19)

Someone commented at a recent Wednesdays@One exchange that a poem under discussion contained too many conjunctions, articles, relative pronouns and the like.  In other words, the poem didn't read like a poem but like exposition.  The writer was admonished to revise the poem accordingly, in the name of "compression" and "economy."

These are laudable goals in the writing of poems, to be sure, and since our project involved contemplative modes of thought and feeling, and since we used some William Carlos Williams poetry as models (particularly "Fine Work with Pitch and Copper"), comments about excessive use of parts of speech are fair.  But the observation, made in passing, stayed with me this week, in the form of questions about poetry, style and grammar and usage.

• How free is a poem to ignore points of standard grammar and usage?
• Is poetry compelled to test the limits we ordinarily place on expository writing?
• What do "compression" and "economy" look like in a poem?
• Can adherence to, or departure from, standard rules of grammar be considered a style?
• At what point in a poem do compression and economy (for our purposes, elimination of parts of speech) result in mere obscurity?

I suppose answers to these questions might be, from top to bottom: very, but at some risk to sound and sense; I wouldn't say compelled, though innovative writing often does; sometimes, these qualities look like scarcity, and sometimes like laziness, and sometimes like ignorance; of course!; at the point where the poet's ear stops working.

If you scroll back to last week's blog entry, then down to the Williams poem, you can see language that is compressed and economical.  Which is to say, the poem is made of a small number of words (71), none of which are overly Latinate.  Concrete nouns predominate (I count 15).  Noun modifiers are used rather sparely, and in at least half the instances are unique and musical, that is, not gratuitous.  The lone simile ("like the sacks of sifted stone") is musical and straightforward, but fresh, the antithesis of ornament.  And the imagery is highly visual, but not dramatic or garishly bright or otherwise showy, the overall effect being a portrait of rest or stasis.

But look closely and you'll also see ample use of conjunctions, definite articles, prepositional phrases (a slew of those), and forms of the weak verb "be" which functions repeatedly as a linking device.  And yet the language of the poem reads and feels highly compressed, economical.

One part of speech that you don't see used in this poem is the relative pronoun, and this is why the language feels so spare.  To the extent that relative pronouns are used in any writing, they "explain," they subordinate or super-ordinate, they contextualize, which is to say, they editorialize, which is also to say, they comment on the main thought of a sentence, and reveal something about the writer.

In "Fine Work with Pitch and Copper," Williams set out to record what he saw--workmen at rest--without inserting himself into the thing described.  Reading this poem, we know nothing of the observer, how he feels about what he sees, what he believes about it, or even from what special vantage he views it.  The observer is not there.  And there lies the feeling of compression and economy you take away from this poem.  Removing the "and's" and "in's" and "by's" and so forth, converting the "is's" and "are's" to action verbs will do nothing to make this poem more economical or "poetic."  In fact, it will only make the poem sound stilted and gauzy.

Here's what can happen in a poem when you do dispense with certain parts of speech:

Spring day wondrous cloud

Across blue horizon,

Casting tall tree in shadow

Fresh green leaves still,

Many small hands in silent prayer.

Brilliant light after rain,

Blue mirrors everywhere,

Spirit of springtime at feet—

Splash splash splash

Green and tan rubber boots.

Feet dry, warm inside.

Reflections of sky in puddle.

Walking on clouds,

Freedom.

Now the author of this piece surely could argue that the language is compressed--of course! In fact, in this poem, whole classes of parts of speech have been jettisoned in a bid for "essence": the joyousness of being alive on a spring day! Have you read poems like this before? They are often in the contemplative vein, but minus articles, coordinating conjunctions, relative clauses, pronouns. No doubt the author of this poem felt that joyousness and reveled in the brightness of cloud and leaf and rain puddle. But one thing the paucity of determiners in this poem makes clear is its clichéd emotive quality and predictably upbeat series of visual images.

Poetry often aims for economy of expression, but not by squeezing language dry.