Is Simpler Always Better in Poetry?

In the Fathoms Deep thread, I offered a reaction to the Michelle's excellent image. I knew the reaction was my voice and intended it as more a reaction than a rewrite.

This prompted a very interesting post by Crashbam That I will quote here:

crashbam said:

Not to be a complete, suck up, brown nosing newbie, but I think both versions work, though in different ways.

I like the simplicity of Michelle's version. It's a simple clear image. It's haikuian (If this isn't a real word, I take full credit for bastardizing the language).

dddgryphon's image is more vivid in some ways (They circle the dark depths, never breaching into light)

I'm on an anti adverb kick, so I'm on the fence about fitfully (I just finished William Zinssers "On Writing Well"). And I think I like the simplicity of whale over leviathan, though that word appeals to my Melville obsession.

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Which made me think -- "Wow, does my voice overcomplicate and obfusticate meaning?" I know that Crashbam didn't intend it this way, but my initial reaction was just that.

Then I thought, maybe I'm just old now, and my voice sounds old fashioned -- not an out of touch sort of thing for a middle-aged writer to think.

So, I looked up Zinsser's book and found some interesting quotes, That spoke specifically to Zinsser's direction. I ask you to bear with me if this becomes overly long, as I think it is an important discussion.

Zinsser said:

(whole of this is found at http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sources/zinsser.htm)Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. . .But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur, ironically, in proportion to education and rank. . .Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into a depressed socioeconomic area, a salesman into a marketing representative and garbage collectors into waste disposal personnel. In New Canaan, Connecticut, the incinerator is now the "volume reduction unit." I think of Bill Mauldin's cartoon showing two hoboes riding a freight train. One of them says, "I started as a simple bum, but now I'm hard-core unemployed.". . .
Style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it. Trying to add style is like adding a toupee. At first glance the formerly bald man looks young and even handsome. But at second glance and with a toupee there is always a second glancehe doesn't look quite right. The problem is not that he doesn't look well groomed; he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker's almost perfect skill. The point is that he doesn't look like himself.
This is the problem of the writer who sets out deliberately to garnish his prose. You lose whatever it is that makes you unique. The reader will usually notice if you are putting on [end of page 20] airs. He wants the person who is talking to him to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.

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I think that Zinsser means well and is correct in a number of circumstances. I think his advice is more valuable in terms of newspaper reporting, non-fiction, script writing, and daily writing. I'm not so sure I agree with his assertions when it comes to story telling or poetry.

I did a quick bit a research at Poets.org and come up with the following:

Alone by Maya Angelou
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19212 White Apples by Donald Hall

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16497 Fishing on the Susquehanna in July by Billy Collins

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15605 Vespers by Louise Gluck

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16423 Take the I Out by Sharon Olds

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16891 Quilts by Nikki Giovanni

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16762 Dishwater by Ted Kooser

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15227 Miracle Ice Cream by Adrienne Rich

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16395 June Light by Richard Wilbur

All randomly selected from the "Most Popular Contemporary Poets on Poets.org, Summer 2006 and all excellent poems (at least I think so)

I am struck by the sparsness of their work. There is indeed a simplicity of language and a plainess to their work. Work which remains beautiful and poetic despite the lack of florid language.

If you've made it this far, go on to the next post. Where I lay out the 10 most popular poets on Poets.org Summer 2006.

After that we can actually begin to have a discussion.

{Sorry, previewed to see if I remembered the format correctly and am not retyping that bit -- the links are good}

The 10 most popular poets on Poets.org

With Maya Angelou the only carryover on the list I will extend to number 11:

Here they are with a random poem:

William Shakespeare

Langston Hughes

e e cummings

Robert Frost

Emily Dickinson

W. H. Auden

Walt Whitman

Sylvia Plath

William Carlos Williams

Dylan Thomas

Okay. Between these two posts we have apples, oranges, pears, cherries, blueberries and watermelons to compare against one another.

All of this to ask a question of poetry. What is poetic? What rules can we apply to a poetic bit of writing? Can the same rules govern all forms of writing?

Then let's make it personal:

What do you mean when you choose words? What makes you pick a word like Leviathan over Whale? (I'll give my answer eventually) When is an adverb needed or not needed?

I'm not trying to be difficult. You may remember how I dislike all the attention paid to "The Red Wheelbarrow" and how I don't find it worthy of the immense praise and importance put on it. In fact, I find "Tract" a much more worthy and important effort by the same poet and wonder why? Why do I prefer one over the other? What makes something sing for me?

Finally, in my third post, I'll give a quick prose example, just to clarify my concern over Zinsser's importance when writing creatively.

A prose example

This will show where my sympathies lay, more clearly than anything else.

I've grabbed a random paragraph from my favorite prose author (Ray Bradbury) and intend to Zinsser it. FWIW, I have randomly opened "The Martian Chronicles" and found the opening paragraph to "October 2002: The Shore"

Bradbury said:

Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The first wave carried with it men accustomed to spaces and coldness and being alone, the coyote and cattlemen, with no fat on them, with faces the years had worn the flesh off, with eyes like nailheads, and hands like the material of old gloves, ready to touch anything. Mars could do nothing to them, for they were bred to plains and prairies as open as the Martian fields. They came and made things a little less empty, so that others would find courage to follow. They put panes in hollow windows and lights behind the panes.

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My edit:

Men spread like waves over the surface of Mars. Each wave was stronger than the one before it. The first wave of men knew spaces, coldness and being alone. There was no fat on them, because they had been hardened by their lives. They were leathery and ready to touch anything. Mars couldn't hurt them because they came from plains and prairies as open and empty as the Martian fields. With their arrival, things became less empty and others found courage to follow. They created homes that lit the way for others.

My thoughts: Many of the ideas presented by Zinsser are excellent for the clarity required of articles, non-fiction, and daily writing. For my money, however, Poetry and creative writing in general isn't so much about the facts as it is about the experience. Words are chosen for their implications as well as their explicitness. Some words are more evocative than others -- some words echo differently (like harmonics in music) leaving a different vibration in the reader or listener.

Please don't read this as a defense of my choice of words, but I think that the choice between whale and leviathan is an excellent example of linguistic harmonics. The vibe and image of whale is different than that of leviathan so, depending on the moment and the carriage of emotion and image, which word you choose is inherently different.

That's the long and the short of it -- what's the worst, you've read some excellent poetry and listend to a crazy middle aged man rant on about something.

I'm interested what other folks here think about word choice, voice, and the nature of writing.

I hope this becomes at least as lively as the Wheelbarrow discussion.

Kevin:

Great thoughts. I think you need an intimacy with words akin to a Jazz player's intimacy with music in order to write like that. Judging from your work, you have an internal relationship with words that allows you to write in ways others wish they could. Same way Monk could play in ways others wished they could.

About Monk -- and I know I always fall back on music for explanation -- but people would look and analyze what he would do and think "you can't do that" but they were amazed, because you could, and it worked beautifully. Somebody has to cross the ocean. Rewriting is a tool many of us need, but not all of us. I need it because I'm constantly reaching with my words, trying to reach a common understanding between the words and me. This was Beethoven's experience in composing -- fighting for his meaning. Mozart didn't fight, he was so much at one with the music that it literally poured out of him onto the page -- nearly perfect in a single draft. In all of music history we've only had one Mozart. The rest of us fall between the worst and best.

You are in tune with the resonance of your words -- the right word falls from your mind and the resonance fills us, the readers, even if you yourself don't.

This is a part of what I'm talking about. A lot of us here are trying to learn and grow and are fighting to reach that zen state which you exemplify.

Don't apologize for being brilliant and I won't apologize for not being so. I'd hate to have to commission something from you and slowly poison you to death . We'd all suffer in the end for that.

BTW: I'm glad to see you posting, if only in the poetry game, your verse again. It always resonates, and in the end, that's what I think good writing should do: resonate.

Stew21 said:

I don't think this accounts for natural ability, nearly enough. Just my opinion.

eta: I don't think this discussion is really about how it gets to the page, but the result being simple or complex and how it effects the reader. which is better? not which way the writer wrote it.

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Close, I'm wondering which one speaks more clearly, and is more likely to create sensation in the reader. How it gets there isn't important to me or this discussion (I personally know I need to draft and redraft usually--and the more complex the poem, the more I have to do that).

Also, we seem to be hung up on the definition of complex. I don't consider, for easy example, leviathan to be a complex word. I do think it is a word with a good deal of resonance. A lot of 20th century music proved that complexity for the sake of complexity doesn't make something good -- though it took a while for that lesson to be learned. Art is intended to communicate -- if it becomes so complex that it fails to do that, what's the point?

Where's the happy medium?

What is a poetic turn? Where is it different from prose? Can we impose prosaic clarity on poetry and it still be poetry?

wordsheff said:

didn't the Beats and those of the Harlem Renaissance, among many others I'm sure I'm unaware of, use that "jazz philosophy" to death? C'mon, that's over and done with.

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This is what gets you into trouble -- speaking about something without actually understanding the philosophy behind it.

Haven't sonnets been done to death? Aren't they over and done with?

In addition Jazz was brought up as a metaphor for poetry rather than a structure -- but classical music was also brought up, yet I don't hear you ridiculing classical poetry that was informed by such music and philosophies.

My contention is, that anything that can make a work speak to an audience isn't over and done with. Things may fall out of vogue, but that doesn't mean there's nothing left to say in that voice. Or that that voice can't inform or help shape another. Nothing ever really goes away, it simply morphs into other things with echoes of the original coming through.