{"id":15176,"date":"2021-03-16T19:36:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T23:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15176"},"modified":"2021-03-16T19:36:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T23:36:40","slug":"snow-and-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15176","title":{"rendered":"Snow and poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo credit: Andrew Small @ andsmall. From Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Remember that snow<\/strong> I said we\u2019d probably still get, because you can\u2019t get out of March in Minnesota without an encore or two? It came last night. A couple inches, and it\u2019s already starting to melt. I guess some\u2019s coming tomorrow too. But Spring has the big momentum now. Even if the snow keeps coming back, it\u2019ll be in short, vicious snaps, like a rat dying in a trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s something I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve written about before here. Poetic prose. I am, as I\u2019ve often said, a poor poet, even when I bother. (I was fairly well on in years before I even started to figure out what poetry is.) But over the years I\u2019ve picked up some ideas about adding poetic touches to my prose. Father Ailill in the Erling books, stage Irishman that he is, is particularly prone to poetic flights, which is one of the things that makes him fun to write. And with St. Patrick\u2019s Day coming up, this might be a good winter\u2019s day to discuss the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while back I was in a gathering where someone mentioned, cautiously, that they\u2019d been writing poetry, and what did we think of it? And they read some of it. I think that person was hoping I\u2019d say it was great, but I said nothing. Because it wasn\u2019t very good. I wished I had the opportunity to talk to them about it one-on-one, but I didn\u2019t get that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I wanted to say to them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You think you\u2019re writing poetry here, but what you\u2019re actually doing is just writing prose, the way you\u2019d write prose any time, and then breaking the lines up. Poetry is more than just the way you lay your words out on the page. It\u2019s about using words, and loving words, and manipulating words, marshaling the power of words to say more than bald prose can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think of good poetry, one line comes to mind \u2013 my favorite line of poetry in the world. I\u2019m not generally much interested in Dylan Thomas, but his poem, \u201cThe Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower<\/a>,\u201d amazes me. Just the first line (which is also the title), actually. I think it\u2019s almost perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe force that through the green fuse drives the flower\n\u201cDrives my green age\u2026\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Look what Thomas does with that first line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eleven syllables. Of those syllables, each is single word, except for the last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such a sequence constructs a picture in the listener\u2019s mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-double<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which translates, semi-visually, to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-FLOWER<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a picture of a flower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then the poet takes that picture of a flower and manipulates it. The stem becomes a \u201cfuse.\u201d \u201cFuse\u201d is obviously a loaded word. Slightly sinister. Suddenly, instead of a mental picture of a flower, the picture is of a fuse burning down toward a dynamite charge. And when the fuse gets to the end, the charge explodes, and that explosion is a flower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suddenly we see the flower in a whole new way. It\u2019s not just a pretty (kind of effete) plant sitting in the ground, looking decorative. It\u2019s a little explosion, driven by some kind of a \u201cforce.\u201d The rest of the poem expands on that idea of a life force. This is not one of Wordsworth’s daffodils. This is a dangerous flower, a flower from a rough neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s what poetry is. It exploits the sounds of the words, the rhythm of the words, the associations of the words, and even the way the words look on paper, to turn ideas into little explosions in your head. You think in a new way, and you see in a new way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s like a workout for your brain. And your spirit. It makes the muscles stronger, capable of doing things you never knew they could do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remember that snow I said we\u2019d probably still get, because you can\u2019t get out of March in Minnesota without an encore or two? It came last night. A couple inches, and it\u2019s already starting to melt. I guess some\u2019s coming tomorrow too. But Spring has the big momentum now. Even if the snow keeps coming … Continue reading Snow and poetry<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,17],"tags":[820,2608],"class_list":["post-15176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-dylan-thomas","tag-snow"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15177,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15176\/revisions\/15177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}