You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [14]
Of course, even simple, everyday words can be arranged in ways that bring out their music and magic. Here are the opening lines of Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking":
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, that musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries ...
The first sentence of this poem—a long sentence by any standard—goes on like this for twenty-two lines about birth ("Out of the Ninth-month midnight") and the speaker's youthful days. (The poem runs two hundred and eighty-three lines in total.) At most, you'll have to look up only a couple of words in your dictionary. A few phrases are somewhat unusual: "musical shuttle," "Ninth-month midnight," "twining." They're less than common, but they aren't exotic. The poem is composed mainly of meat-and-potato words, but Whitman has arranged them to be more song than conversation. He makes the simple language sing.
Here's a complete poem by Whitman (if you haven't already, I urge you to read his poems). Again, notice the everyday language he uses:
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
These eighty-two words are fairly plain. Fifty-nine consist of a single syllable; they're common, simple words. And what a delightful poem they make.
One aspect you may notice in both poems is Whitman's use of repetition, a rhetorical device in which the same phrase or sentence structure is repeated, usually for emphasis. Whitman often repeats prepositional phrases ("Out of . . . " and "When . . . ") to keep his long sentences readable, and thus to keep the reader on track. He also uses repetition to build the poem: It allows him to bring new subjects in. Practice this device, repeating a grammatical structure, as a way to bring more of the world into your poems.
There's room in poems for exotic words, those that sound strangely beautiful and those that sound beautifully strange: amorphous, expunge, ululation. Language is the medium of poetry, as paint is the medium of painting, clay of pottery, wood of carpentry. It's the poet's responsibility to understand the medium, to understand the value of both everyday words and exotic, to know the language and how it works. The poet uses language in much the same way the carpenter uses wood: one piece at a time, one joined to another, and that joined to another, until the whole is complete and stands on its own. Just as there are exquisite details involved in carpentry, so there are exquisite details that exotic language can provide. The everyday language, however, the words we're most accustomed to, they're the mainstay of poetry. They're the words that build the poem. In most poems, they're all you need, word by word, from its beginning in delight to its end in wisdom. Take delight in words, their sounds and meaning. Keep your ears open. Listen to the language. Learn how it works. Collect words and make them your own.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Collect twenty meat-and-potato words you like the sounds of. Collect ten exotic words you like the sounds of. Now write a draft using ten meat-and-potato and three exotic words. Include an avocado in the draft.
2. Write a draft about a busy intersection. Use only everyday words, slang and street language. Include