Leaping poetry - working with ellipsis (7.29.21)

Note to all in Wednesdays@One: this is a project posting.  You'll find the project directions at the end of the post, but do read all of this piece for context.  

You've experienced this before, I'm sure.  You're reading a poem and come to a line or a phrase and something's missing.  You stop and back up, read again.  Something's missing.  You can still make sense of the poem, of the thought being expressed, but . . .

What you just read "past" is an ellipsis, in this case a typographical representation of a thought that has not been spelled out for you.  Yet you know the elided words: "but something's missing."  You know these are the correct words to follow the ellipsis marks (. . .) and can therefore supply them yourself.  You know them because of context: they are repeated.  

So why not just repeat them, especially in a poem?  Repetition is a pretty good poetic technique, after all.  Sometimes, though, you get more impact by not repeating this kind of phrase, by letting the thought "hang" from the end of the ellipsis for the reader to complete.  I suppose there are fascinating psycho-linguistic reasons for doing this in a work of art.  The reader gets to contribute to the poem, by "finishing" the thought.  Or the writer can write a thought more economically by not adding words and phrases that the reader can supply.  Either way, ellipsis helps writer and reader connect in a poem, giving them both something to be responsible for, together.

Here are a couple of non-poetic examples of what I mean, cadged from my copy of the Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers:

He is older than I.

Our house is small, his large.

There's an implied "am" at the end of the first statement, which would complete the thought grammatically, but which is unnecessary since we all know that's the correct grammatical construction, and we know the writer knows that too.  In the second example, "house is" is implied in the second half of the statement; it repeats what's in the first half.  In both cases, the meaning remains clear despite the left-out wording.

Okay, so you already know this stuff; why (do I) belabor the point?  (I belabor the point) Because poets can do some fun, interesting, powerful things with ellipsis.  Even with ellipses that are "incorrect," grammatically speaking.  And in fact, especially when they are ("incorrect," grammatically speaking).

Some years ago, I set out to write prose poems and wound up writing a book of them.  A number of those poems were based on sentences that committed errors in elliptical clauses, called "dangling ellipticals."  An elliptical clause works on the same principle as an ellipsis, but it makes a thought confusing or ambiguous.  Words that would make the meaning clear are elided, sometimes to comic effect.  Here's an example from my Prentice-Hall Handbook:

Clause-subject relationship stated clearly: 

When I was a baby, I was given a silver cup by my grandfather.

Elliptical clause-subject relationship implied (but still clear):

When a baby, I was given a silver cup by my grandfather.

Elliptical clause-subject relationship "dangling":

When a baby, my grandfather gave me a silver cup.

The full clause is "when I was a baby."  The elliptical clause is "when a baby."  And you can see in the third example how ellipses can lead you astray of a "grammatically correct" expression, and maybe into some fun.  Here's one of the prose poems I wrote that begins with a dangling elliptical clause:

Uncle Fred, the Barber

 

When at the age of six, my Uncle Fred gave me my first haircut. He said to me, “Let’s play barber. I’ll be the barber.” And that was that. He started in with shears that seemed too big for his little boy hands. But I didn’t worry. My Uncle Fred’s hands have always surprised people. When at the age of four, my Uncle Fred could hold me in the palm of his much smaller boy hand. He carried me around the neighborhood concealed behind his back and then sprang me upon anybody we met. Mrs. Parrott nearly had a heart attack. Before long, snip, snip, snip, one side was done, but once the bleeding stopped we lost interest in the barber game, and so the other side never got a haircut. The thing I’ll never forget and for which I shall always be grateful is that first haircut. They don’t give haircuts like that anymore.

Now imagine this poem if the words "I was" were inserted (correctly) after its first word!  My point, and our next project, is this: a dangling elliptical is a good place to leap out of the ordinary in a poem, to launch you into the realm of the unconscious, and of course the fun(ny).  So here is your project . . .

PROJECT **

Adopt one of the following elliptical clause errors as the opening gambit in a poem.  Let its absurdity or grammatical confusion mis-direct you into a new poem.  Go where the error invites you to go!  You do NOT have to write a prose poem, or even a narrative poem.  You DO have to have fun!

If attacked, the maneuvers planned last week can be used.

When well stewed, you drain off the juice.

If lost, we shall pay a reward for the ring.

While picking flowers, it started to rain.

My bicycle tire became flat while hurrying to the dentist.

While attending the theater, the apartment was looted.

** This project doesn't address that other kind of leaping poetry, the Lorca kind that Robert Bly writes about in various places, and that has to do with our ability (really, our modern inability) to "leap" into the mysterious, the veiled side of the human psyche.  If you're interested in that, buy his book here: Leaping Poetry.