Putting One Word in Front of the Other

My wife is the poet, not me. I do wish sometimes that I was a bit more poetical. It would make my writing better, more artistic. Art is about evoking emotion, and nothing evokes emotion like poetry (except music, which is itself a kind of poetry). Through metaphor and symbology, poetry reaches not just the brain, but the heart, the soul. That being said, I must confess that poetry sometimes loses me. I get lost in the words and the imagery befuddles me. If I am really going to get it, I have to read it multiple times. I don’t think I am alone in this. “Getting” poetry requires an effort. But so does “getting” a painting or a sculpture. You have to let the work, work on you.

The reason some people have trouble with Shakespeare is not just that he uses archaic language or refers to events that were only known in his day. The main reason people have problems with it is that his language is poetical, symbolic. It is meant to take the listener on an artistic journey, not just convey information. Consider the following from Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Shakespeare could have said:

The farmers’ crops have been ruined.

Instead he said:

The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

Look at his words. The words themselves are normal words. With the exception of the “hath” and “ere” there is nothing archaic about any of the words (and even hath and ere might appear in modern poetry). They are all in common usage today. But they are put together in a heightened, poetical way that conveys more feeling than just a statement of information. People did not talk like this in Shakespeare’s day, any more than they talk like this today. It is imagery. It is poetry. His audience had to navigate the poetry just like we do.

There are times in my writing when I feel like an artistic muse is helping me, and my words are attaining a touch of the poet. But most of the time my prose is just prose and not terribly artistic. I am just putting one word in front of the other, moving the story along. That is okay for the most part, but I wouldn’t mind if that muse touched me just a bit more often.

Star Liner

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