On Style

by Michael Bugeja

Most of the time, poets deal with style and content. In other words, they try to ascertain the best form or structure for the topic or theme of a specific poem. Increasingly newer poets are concerned about style and content and one more element: publication. That's key. The professional writer's motto -- "good work speaks for itself" -- is only half true; I amend the saying to read: "Good work speaks for itself … in front of the right editor."

With that, I'll address a few questions -- one about style and content, and the other about style and publication.

Patricia Spork asks, "In a time of 'concise' writing, do you feel poetry is becoming a vehicle for short-cut descriptions that lead to less clarity?"

Hmmm. Most poets and writers believe that "concise" writing improves rather than hampers clarity. But I know what you mean: you can tighten a poem to a certain stage, improving clarity; but if you tighten any more, as a component of personal style, the entire structure may topple.

This happened early in the career of the great poet Theodore Roethke, http://www.thebrothers.com/eraaz/roethke1.html, especially in his 1941 book, Open House (New York: Knopf, 1941). He would tighten until the poem's foundation literally collapsed.

On the other hand, most poets would rather err on the concise rather than wordy side of this debate. Reason? Wordiness equals doggerel.

Examples:
• "Question: To be. Not." (Style: too "concise"; effect: obliqueness)
• "I ponder the question and wonder if you/ Intend now to be or not to be true." (Style: wordy; effect: doggerel)
• "To be or not to be, that is the question." (Style: classic; effect: perfection)

Sometimes perfection calls for extreme conciseness, as in Ezra Pound's famous "In a Station of the Metro" (see http://eserver.org/poetry/in-a-station.txt. But conciseness is not confined to any era, especially our wordy own tabloid end of the millennium; it is that other old saying about poetry that applies to (and answers) this question: Poetry is the best words in the best order.

Another visitor named Deidre asks, "I have been published once and it was written in rhyme. Why is it that now when I enter a contest and write in rhyme, no one is interested. Older people still like that type of writing and my friends say it makes more sense. Why is it that publishers don't care about that style anymore? I understand it is harder to write rhyme than prose."

Well, I haven't read Deidre's poetry, and so my comments here are not directed at her. But let's bust this myth once and for all about "older folks" liking rhyme. Yes, many but not all of them like rhyme better than "workshop" free verse found in typical webzines and literary magazines. But hold on. These same older folks who reportedly like rhyme actually bought and read poetry by other people. Those other people were called poets, and everyone knew they were rare in the populace, the few who could rhyme with imagery and insight, varying meter within ancient forms without inversions to express the highest truths via symbol and metaphor, as these miraculous lines by Robert Frost from "Mowing:"

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

You can read the poem in its entirety at http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/frost/29.html.

The fact is, publishable rhyme is more than "difficult." It is near about impossible for most people -- including all those famous free-verse poets celebrated in the best books and universities. Here's why rhymed verse is harder to publish than free verse: The form of such a poem must meld with the topic, the rhyme must do similarly with the meter and theme, and the language must transcend the ordinary into the heavenly or hellish realms.

Now let's bust the second myth: that publishers don't care about rhymed poetry. Sure they do. They publish it when it is worth publishing, and that is seldom. To read some of the best rhymed poetry being published today, check out The Formalist (320 Hunter Drive, Evansville, IN 47711).

The fine poet Miller Williams, a proponent of rhyme and form, compares ice skating and walking to rhymed and free verse. Walking (free verse) can never be as graceful as skating (rhymed verse), he says. Miller adds, however, that walking can never be as awkward "bad skating" … slipping on the ice of formalism.

Rhymed poetry not only has to contain the best words in the best order but also the best words that rhyme with other words, usually in the best meter, embedded in the best form, to suit the topic and execute the theme.
That's a tall but worthy order. Keep at it.

-- MB
© 1999 Michael Bugeja