An insightful comment from one of our poets during this week's Wednesdays@One salon:
Writers use adverbs when they don't trust the verb.
How true, I thought at the time. But I wonder how true that statement really is? The occasion for the comment during the salon was a somewhat clichéd application: leaves flutter gleefully.
The pathetic fallacy aside (can leaves be gleeful?) and in this writer's defense, it's sometimes hard for any writer, novice or experienced poet, to avoid this kind of error. I mentioned Matthew Arnold to the group, forgetting that it was the cultural critic, John Ruskin, who coined the term. (Maybe that's because Arnold, definitely an accomplished poet, veered dangerously into PF territory in "Dover Beach.") Applying human emotions to things not human always puts us on the cusp of sentimentality and/or pathetic fallacy.
Another writer asked about the difference between personification and pathetic fallacy, and this is it: PF is a form of personification. It just takes the figure a little too far into sentiment, on the one hand, and reverses the emphasis on the other. Personification generally is meant to isolate and illustrate a human feature--an emotion, a physical state, a frame of mind, a motive--by applying it where it doesn't belong. PF, on the other hand, seeks to invest the inanimate with human traits to enliven the inanimate.
Whatever. The error got me thinking, once again, about the parts of speech and the poet's toolbox of figures and how these influence our writing, whether we're aware of it or not.
It's never a bad thing that we choose verbs with enough concreteness and punch to stand on their own in an image or a statement, without the aid of modifiers. We've discussed this before at W@1, as a scroll through the archives of this blog will show. Verbs are the precious gems of the poet's vocabulary. A serious writer should always be on the lookout for verbs that express on their own.
But that doesn't mean we should shun modifiers all together, not even adverbs. Adverbs and adjectives can intensify a verb or even an entire predicate. They can limit a verb's meaning in a thought or an image. They change or limit another word's meaning relative to place (where), time (when), manner (how) and degree (how much, to what extent). That other word can be a verb, an adjective, and even another adverb.
While we poets ought to work a little harder for that verb that does its own heavy lifting in a thought, an image, a line of verse, we needn't avoid modifiers like adverbs at all costs. Sometimes, those costs are too high and our poem loses out. But consider the following four statements where the adverb modifies the how of the verb:
The sun shines brightly.
The sun shines dully.
The sun shines dutifully.
The sun shines happily.
The first two applications describe a physical characteristic: the intensity of the sunlight. The first example might work without the adverbial modifier, if you're looking to economize or compress the language of your image. It might be enough simply to say "the sun shines." The second example, though, introduces a new idea to one's sense of how the sun shines. How can something "shine" and be "dull" at the same time? Well, that would be for the poem to work out.
The second two applications above are problematic because the adverbs in them mean to apply human traits or emotions to the inanimate sun: responsibility or obligation and happiness. Does this mean their associations are both "false" (i.e., pathetic fallacy)? Maybe, maybe not. The fourth example is sentimental and a cliché; for how long in human history have we associated a sunny day with happiness? For ever! So, been there, used that . . . too many times. But the third example, though it applies a human trait to the sun, offers a new take on how we might think about the sun's purpose in the universe: it has no choice but to shine because that's what bright objects in the heavens do. But to think of that function in terms of obligation is a new idea (so far as I can tell) about the sun and the universe and, ultimately, our relation to both.
As a poet, I might even seek a more provocative verb than "shines" to express the thought on example number three. I might write that the sun "labors" or the sun "grovels" or the sun "complies," thereby avoiding the modifier thing all together, while injecting some very curious imagery into my poem (and, once again, bringing the language of the poem to the surface of your experience, dear reader).
The point, I guess, is twofold. One, know your language and its history well enough to know a cliché when you see one, and overdone sentiment as well, so you can get rid of it. And two, modifiers are every bit as valuable to an image, a thought, a line of poetry as any other part of speech, so long as you treat them artfully.
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