The title of this blog piece ought to suggest where it's headed: syntax. That is, the relationship between or among words and grammatical constructions in a sentence. Sounds pretty dry, doesn't it? Yes, okay, but think about what mastery of syntax can mean for your writing. Think what an improved appreciation for and sensitivity to the plasticity of language can do for your art.
Massaging the elements of a sentence, moving thoughts and modifiers, relative clauses, phrases and such around from first place to last to intermediate positions, affects tone, mood, pace, rhythm, pitch and voice. And because it affects these, it affects meaning as well--how it is delivered to your mind as you read: in small bites, broad brush strokes, forwards or backwards, haltingly or in a torrent or with balance and precision, a light or a heavy touch.
Here's the part of the poem I have just been reading in the current issue of Rattle that put me in mind of this topic and for our next project:
Let's say: we never made love in the dune shack--
We kissed and walked away, dunes glassy around us.
We gazed out to sea, we never looked back.
We tell ourselves: we never made love in the dune shack.
We stopped short, where the weathered driftwood found us,
And turned away in the lee of the dune grass.
We never made love, we say, in the dune shack.
We kissed and walked away, the dunes glassy around us.
This poem, by Carolyn Wright, and titled "Triolets on a Dune Shack," is exactly what its title announces. It's a triolet poem, which is usually made of eight-line stanzas rhyming ABaAaBAB, where the capital letters represent lines repeated verbatim. This might make a fun project sometime, but let's say: save that for another project.
For now, just focus on lines 1, 4 and 7 of the stanza above. Note that these are repeated nearly verbatim, but not quite verbatim, and it's the "not quite" parts that I want to draw your attention to. Line 1 opens with "Let's say:", to get the stanza off to a suitably situational or hypothetical tone, as if saying, "for argument's sake, let's say . . ." (This is the second and completing stanza of the poem. The first posits the opposite: "we made love in the dune shack.") That opener, with its colon, is meant to focus attention. It also establishes a rhetorical framework, that of argumentation, of a proposition being laid down. And as you know, all propositions invite you to read on for the inevitable conclusion(s) to be drawn.
In a triolet, you expect that lines 4 and 7 will simply repeat this opening statement. In this example, you should also expect that the repetitions will help to advance the proposition toward some concluding remark or observation. And they do, after a fashion, a more modern fashion: they repeat but not with exactitude. They riff off of the opening line.
But the opening attention focuser changes in line 4: "We tell ourselves." The position of the proposition remains the same: initial. The context of the proposition changes slightly. The implied "we" of "Let's say" becomes more explicit; and rather than debating a point among some unknown others, we are now talking to ourselves. Are "ourselves" the two lovers who never made love in the dune shack? Who exactly is being addressed here, and what is your situation, as a reader, vis a vis the action or unfolding information of the poem?
This argument for argument's sake tone remains in line 7, where again the post-colon statement is rendered verbatim. But in this case the arresting or pointing colon has disappeared and the framing proposition ("Let's say:" and "We tell ourselves") has moved. It now is inserted into the middle of the statement--you, the reader, are made to wait for it--and its conditionality has been replaced by something more declarative: "we say."
Why am I going into such detail with these three simple lines of poetry? Mainly, it's to highlight the plastic quality of the constructions, how parts and pieces of a statement can be plucked from one grammatical position and dropped into another, with corresponding effects on tone, pacing, meaning. What caught my eye immediately upon reading this poem the first time was how deftly the poet used the rules of English grammar to enhance these aspects of her poem. She treats each line as a series of highly interchangeable, malleable grammatical elements that can be moved here and there for effect.
Did the poet set out to do this sort of thing? Maybe. Without inquiring directly, how are we to know? Maybe she "arrived" at this shape through pure experimentation, as in, "I wonder what the effect would be on this line if I moved this part of it to the middle . . ." Maybe she tried tacking the proposition onto the end of the line and decided that was a tack too far.
But she had the options, because English provides them, within the rules of its grammar. And experienced poets will take advantage. Which is exactly what I'm challenging you to do, my worthy colleagues! Give it a try. Move stuff around. See what happens. See you next Wednesday.
Massaging the elements of a sentence, moving thoughts and modifiers, relative clauses, phrases and such around from first place to last to intermediate positions, affects tone, mood, pace, rhythm, pitch and voice. And because it affects these, it affects meaning as well--how it is delivered to your mind as you read: in small bites, broad brush strokes, forwards or backwards, haltingly or in a torrent or with balance and precision, a light or a heavy touch.
Our project
Write a poem in which you move sentence parts around, in an initial position, a medial position, a final position, to hear (and see) how these movements affect your poem's tone, pacing, release of information, etc. Bring the version you are most intrigued by or satisfied with to our next salon for sharing; be prepared to share also your experience, to explain how you interacted with the process and built toward the version you've brought to show us. For more guidance, read on . . .
Here's the part of the poem I have just been reading in the current issue of Rattle that put me in mind of this topic and for our next project:
Let's say: we never made love in the dune shack--
We kissed and walked away, dunes glassy around us.
We gazed out to sea, we never looked back.
We tell ourselves: we never made love in the dune shack.
We stopped short, where the weathered driftwood found us,
And turned away in the lee of the dune grass.
We never made love, we say, in the dune shack.
We kissed and walked away, the dunes glassy around us.
This poem, by Carolyn Wright, and titled "Triolets on a Dune Shack," is exactly what its title announces. It's a triolet poem, which is usually made of eight-line stanzas rhyming ABaAaBAB, where the capital letters represent lines repeated verbatim. This might make a fun project sometime, but let's say: save that for another project.
For now, just focus on lines 1, 4 and 7 of the stanza above. Note that these are repeated nearly verbatim, but not quite verbatim, and it's the "not quite" parts that I want to draw your attention to. Line 1 opens with "Let's say:", to get the stanza off to a suitably situational or hypothetical tone, as if saying, "for argument's sake, let's say . . ." (This is the second and completing stanza of the poem. The first posits the opposite: "we made love in the dune shack.") That opener, with its colon, is meant to focus attention. It also establishes a rhetorical framework, that of argumentation, of a proposition being laid down. And as you know, all propositions invite you to read on for the inevitable conclusion(s) to be drawn.
In a triolet, you expect that lines 4 and 7 will simply repeat this opening statement. In this example, you should also expect that the repetitions will help to advance the proposition toward some concluding remark or observation. And they do, after a fashion, a more modern fashion: they repeat but not with exactitude. They riff off of the opening line.
But the opening attention focuser changes in line 4: "We tell ourselves." The position of the proposition remains the same: initial. The context of the proposition changes slightly. The implied "we" of "Let's say" becomes more explicit; and rather than debating a point among some unknown others, we are now talking to ourselves. Are "ourselves" the two lovers who never made love in the dune shack? Who exactly is being addressed here, and what is your situation, as a reader, vis a vis the action or unfolding information of the poem?
This argument for argument's sake tone remains in line 7, where again the post-colon statement is rendered verbatim. But in this case the arresting or pointing colon has disappeared and the framing proposition ("Let's say:" and "We tell ourselves") has moved. It now is inserted into the middle of the statement--you, the reader, are made to wait for it--and its conditionality has been replaced by something more declarative: "we say."
Why am I going into such detail with these three simple lines of poetry? Mainly, it's to highlight the plastic quality of the constructions, how parts and pieces of a statement can be plucked from one grammatical position and dropped into another, with corresponding effects on tone, pacing, meaning. What caught my eye immediately upon reading this poem the first time was how deftly the poet used the rules of English grammar to enhance these aspects of her poem. She treats each line as a series of highly interchangeable, malleable grammatical elements that can be moved here and there for effect.
Did the poet set out to do this sort of thing? Maybe. Without inquiring directly, how are we to know? Maybe she "arrived" at this shape through pure experimentation, as in, "I wonder what the effect would be on this line if I moved this part of it to the middle . . ." Maybe she tried tacking the proposition onto the end of the line and decided that was a tack too far.
But she had the options, because English provides them, within the rules of its grammar. And experienced poets will take advantage. Which is exactly what I'm challenging you to do, my worthy colleagues! Give it a try. Move stuff around. See what happens. See you next Wednesday.
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