When a Poem Seems Done, Look Again
In previous essays on revision, I suggested dismantling a poem, taking it apart, breaking it into sentences, and looking at how it moves, how the sentences interrelate, what variety there is in the sentences, before rearranging it into lines and stanzas as a poem.
But that’s not the only thing you can do when you have laid a poem out for a pre-revision surgery with the muscles, internal organs, and sinews of sentences peeled apart so you can look to see what may be the problem.
In his book How Poems Get Made (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008) James Longenbach suggests also considering how the sentences syntactically are set up. He contends that five elements of a poem—diction, syntax, figuration, rhythm, echo, and repetition— if used carefully, can create a powerful lyric. He argues “that what matters is not to imply the presence of German and Latinate diction, paratactic and hypotactic syntax, figurative and literal language, or rhythmically regular and irregular lines. What matters is. . .(the) moves from Latinate to Germanic diction. . . (the) moves from parataxis to hypotaxis. . .(the) moves from conventional to extravagant metaphors. . .(the) moves from a rhythmically regular to and irregular line.” (Ibid, 80) He goes on to say,
The language of every poem is performing multiple actions at once, creating a repeatable path of
discovery—a new knowledge of reality—through the simultaneous ordering of differing degrees
of echo, different kinds of syntax, different kinds of diction, different levels of figuration, and different degrees of rhythmic regularity. (Ibid.81)
But he acknowledges that “every poem chooses either explicitly or implicitly to do something at the expense of something else,” which, in the case of a free verse poem, means the poem may relinquish the power of meter. (Ibid,124) It’s not a matter of each poem using all these but how it synchronizes “its repetitions of diction, syntax, figure, rhythm and echo” (Ibid,151) and how “the poem orders its movement between Latinate and Germanic diction. . .or between paratactic and hypotactic syntax. . .or between discontinuous figures. . .or between regular or irregular rhythms. . .or between varying densities of echo.” (Idid,150)
He describes each of these, arguing that accomplished poets intentionally use one or more of these in making a poem. Of course, if one doesn’t know what these are and how to use them, it doesn’t mean that a writer cannot make a lovely poem. But it does mean that if a writer has these at their command, it’s more likely that they will be able to compose better poems more often.
When I go back to look at my poems, for example, if I’m more aware of word choice, I’m not just intuitively guessing if a line or word or rhyme doesn’t work. I’m consciously looking at the variations of diction, noting when a Latinate word, which often are more formal in tone, feels out of joint. Instead of saying respirate, I could say gasp, saving syllables and getting the line to move more quickly. If I find a poem has lost its verve, I can notice how the subordinate clauses, one after another, clogged it up. I can be my own physician and operate on the poem before it expires. That’s what a skilled surgeon has over a layperson. It’s the same use of skill and training that makes a writer a professional rather than a dilettante.
I will focus on three elements of writing a good poem—diction, syntax, and line break—since they’re the core of what Longenbach believes need to be skill-sets that any poet must have if they’re going to write good poetry.
DICTION
Longenbach believes poems, as Coleridge said, require the best words in the best order. But its not just using the right word as it is knowing how to use the right combination of words. Longenbach notes that “a sentence dominated by highly Latinate diction will tend to sound written, while a sentence dominated by Germanic monosyllables will tend to sound spoken.” (Ibid,42) The Latinate words tend to be multisyllable, whereas the Germanic tend to be monosyllable. If a poem, or, for that matter, a line has a series of multisyllable words, it will be like traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway during rush hour. It is will be congested. But if the Latinate words are played off against the short, pithy Germanic words, it’s likely to have better word traffic. It will flow. Scientific, educational, psychological, theological, philosophical, and mathematical languages tend to be Latinate. Reading professional journals, therefore, require some familiarity with the jargon of the discipline. Trying to interject such language in a poem always puts the poem at risk from a cardiac arrest. In Yeats’ “The Tower,” for example, he uses three words derived from German (dead, ruse, dream) that abut two Latinate words (Translunar Paradise), to give a punch to the lines that, if he’d kept with the Germanic wouldn’t have as a contrast. (Ibid, 24)
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar Paradise
By paying attention to the short and long words, the words coming from Latin and those coming from the Germanic origin, you can locate moments in lines that might need a kick to get them going. Shoving out a trepidation off a line and adding a fear or terror may just get a line to move and to shift from a heady word to a gutsy one.
SYNTAX
Longenbach describes two types of syntax that, if played against one another, can create a dynamic that propels a poem forward. One type is paratactic which are “clauses, each with its own subject and verb, (that) are arranged side by side, without any sense of hierarchy.” For his example of such a poem, he quotes a Wallace Stevens poem “No Possum. No Sop. No Taters” in which Longenbach rearranges with the last line being the first, showing how, no matter how it is arranged, because each sentence stands by itself, somewhat autonomously, the poem can be configured in reverse and still work. For example, these lines from Stevens don’t necessarily have to be put in a particular order. One sentence doesn’t inevitably, as with a narrative poem, rely on and lead to the next:
He is not here. The old sun.
As absent as if we were asleep.
The field is frozen. The leaves are dry.
Reverse them and, if you didn’t know the original poem, they would still track.
The other type of syntax is hypotactic “because the two clauses are lined by a subordinate conjunction, one clause depends on the other.” This construction is used “when describing the hierarchical relationship between clauses and the effects in a narrative or between facts and conclusions in an argument.” Longenbach cautions that a paratactic syntax can have a logic to it, an inevitability, one thing following another. But it is not necessarily so. The use of a hypotactic syntax, however, does require a certain logic, a hierarchical arrangement, one subordinate to another. John Donne’s “The Canonization,” which Longenbach notes uses “one kind of syntax giving way to another,” concludes with a hypotactic syntax:
Soldiers find war, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
The logic of these lines bring closure to the poem that a series of single sentences wouldn’t do as effectively, although, properly used, they might.
For Longenbach, it isn’t that one syntax is better than another. The craft is in the interplay of the two in a poem, how one works against the other. If a poem consists, as Stevens does, of short sentences that can and do stand by themselves, the language and diction in the sentences, the interplay of Latinate and Germanic (Anglo-Saxton) words need to be employed to create the drama. Diction saves this poem from being monotonous. But if the sentences move back and forth using paratactic and hypotactic syntax as John Donne does so effectively, there’s a natural tension built into the structure of the sentence, in its flow and rhythm and diction isn’t necessarily needed to rescue a poem.
Once you have pulled the sentences from your poem, take a look what kinds of syntax you use. Lonenbach offers a cautionary word that may help when one line feels too prosy while another feels too poetic. He says that “it may seem that elaborately hypotactic syntax will sound written, while simpler syntactical constructions sound spoken.” (Ibid.42)
Elisabeth Bishop’s poetry is a good example of the interplay of varied syntax. In “Crusoe in England,” she moves deftly from one syntax to another. I have labeled the sentences, two being hypotactic with adverbial clauses and with subordinate clauses along with the main sentence. Seven are paratactic. If the paratactic sentences were moved around, one going before another, the meaning wouldn’t necessarily be harmed, although the sound effects would be disturbed. She adds two interrogative sentences, which, by their nature, ask the reader to pause, to think about the questions, before proceeding to the next lines. This also jazzes the poem, keeping the pace moving from straight description to questions to statements, never dawdling in any one type.
This mixture of syntax is something to consider when revising a poem, looking to see how the syntax interacts with the forward movement of a poem, letting some sentences stand on their own, set side by side, with their relationship being implied rather than explained.
Their connection may be associative like an image of a president and a clown sitting next to one another on a podium, the one with his red nose, orange wig, floppy shoes, the other in a blue suit, white tie, and polished shoes. What they have to do with one another is part of the mystery of the poem, not explicitly stated, but hinted at. Something that, later in the poem could be revealed. Just as, in this Bishop poem, the recitation of statements about the island— the volcanoes, the clouds, the turtles—eventually, at the conclusion of the poem, lead to a contrast with the urban society that Crusoe returns to that’s more inhabitable than where he was stranded.
Or their connection can be explicitly shown in the way the subordinate clause depends or modifies the main clause. This happens in Bishop’s first sentence with its adverbial clause (“Where some ship saw. . .”) that alerts us to Crusoe’s island, how someone had seen it, revealing quickly that the poet’s narrator, no longer on the island, has come connection to the island. This sentence is followed by a series of paratactic sentences, each one standing on its own.
Look how the poem evolves with the shifting syntax. Note too how the line breaks in the longer sentences necessarily fragment the sentences whereas the shorter sentences often can stand on their own, mixing the pace and forward movement of the poem.
Hypotactic syntax
A new volcano has erupted,/the papers say, and last week I was reading/ where some ship saw an island being born:/ at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;/ and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—/ rose in the mate’s binoculars/and caught on the horizon like a fly.
4 Paratactic syntax:
They named it.
But my poor old island’s still/ un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.//
Well, I had fifty-two/miserable, small volcanoes I could climb/ with a few slithery strides—/volcanoes dead as ash heaps.
I used to sit on the edge of the highest one/ and count the others standing up,/naked and leaden, with their heads blown off.
Hypotactic:
I’d think that if they were the size/ I thought volcanoes should be, then I had/ become a giant;/ and if I had become a giant,/ I couldn’t bear to think what size/ the goats and turtles were/or the gulls, or the overlapping rollers/ —a glittering hexagon of rollers/ closing and closing in, but never quite,/ glittering and glittering, though the sky/ was mostly overcast.//
2 Paratactic:
My island seemed to be/a sort of cloud-dump.
All the hemisphere’s/ left-over clouds arrived and hung/ above the craters—their parched throats/ were hot to touch.
2 Interrogative:
Was that why it rained so much?
And why sometimes the whole place hissed?
Paratactic:
The turtles lumbered by, high-domed,/ hissing like teakettles.
When you are looking at sentences, pay attention to syntax. It can make or break a poem. See what sort of mix you have in your poem. Of course, when speaking of syntax, you can also look at types of left and right branching sentences, ones that add free modifiers, adverbial, adjectival, or nominal clauses to the front or back end of a sentence. I’ve discussed that in depth in my essay on Elizabeth Bishop’s poems.
LINE BREAKS
While you are looking at your sentences, another aspect of the sentence that Longenbach addresses in his book, The Art of the Poetic Line (Minneapolis: Greywolf Press, 2008) is line break. Line breaks determine how you break the sentences into its component parts, or, in certain circumstances, how you sever the component parts, ripping them apart. Logenbach contends that “the thrill. . .of free verse prosody lies in the ability to shape the movement of a poem through the strategic use of different kinds of line endings.” (Ibid. 70)
Elizabeth Bishop was very conscious of how line breaks can create momentum or pauses in her poems. A poem can, on the one hand, thrust forward, moving rapidly from line to line. It has a certain energy that is like driving down an interstate highway where there’s not much time to pay attention to what’s on the side of the road and to notice a boy dipping his foot in a stream. It’s all happening at once.
Once when I was driving a Head Start mother who’d never been out of her village, never traveled more than three miles from her home, to a regional meeting of Head Start, we were on the superhighway. Her breathing became irregular. Her face flushed. She asked me if I could pull over. Something was wrong. I asked her why she wanted to pull over. She said there weren’t any stop signs, no intersections, no place to slow down. I imagine she felt like someone on a roller-coaster when it reaches the peak and slams downward in a rush. But in her case, the rush didn’t end. It kept going for miles. She wanted to put on the breaks. Some poems have that non-stop energy which comes of poets using certain types of line breaks.
Other poems can feel, on the other hand, more like a lazy walk in the woods, allowing plenty of time to rest by a creek and watch the river flow, which was the life this woman had led up until I got her on an interstate highway.
Still others modulate between superhighway and the back road, the quick and slow moving, depending on what’s happening in the poem. To control the acceleration and deceleration of a poem, to modulate the shifting effects of different line endings, a poet has three tools—and two types—of line breaks: for pacing the line breaks:
End Stop lines
Enjambment
Parsing
Annotating
The end stop line does exactly what it says. The line is “syntactically complete. A strong punctuation mark almost always occurs at the end of the line. . . .(This) drastically reduces the tension between syntax and line. . . (a) line built from a variety of smaller units of syntax, a line that privileges its self-contained rhythmic pattern over the poem’s forward movement.” (Ibid, 49-50) Walt Whitman uses this line ending in many of his poems. Here are the beginning lines of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
The long lines allow him to let the syntax unwind and conclude on one line. Each line stands on its own. Marvin Bell in his collection Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man’s Footsteps, has each poem end with punctuation. Each line is a self-contained unit. Here is the first poem “Baby Hamlet,”
Be that as it may, it may be that it is as it will be.
His word a sword without a hiss.
Cruelly, the son obligated to sacrifice himself to a feud.
On the Feast of the Angel of Consumption and Death.
We move though time beset by indecision.
Thus, events occur while waiting the news.
Or stuck in moral neutral. (Nightworks (Port Townsend, 2000, 3)
These lines, given that they are paratactic, standing on their own, might be reordered without losing the sense of what, as a unit, they mean. But they, as a whole, insist on a pause after each line. None of the words in a line are left dangling. The fragment or sentence stands on its own. For poems that encompass large topics these self-contained lines hold up well. Like a good five course meal, each portion served and digested separately, the poem is consumed in parts, each course savored as it’s served. Bell’s poems require a leisurely read. Sometimes, as with Whitman, after a long list of observations, it’s necessary to take a break from the poem. I’ve read “Song of Myself” a number of times, yet I haven’t read it, start to finish, in one sitting. At some point, I hear my brain cry out, “Enough. Enough.” That’s the downside of end stop lines. By their nature, if they’re syntactically complete, they pack an enormous amount of content in each line. They don’t lend themselves to a quick read. They want you to immerse yourself in them as you would a good novel.
Yet if the poet wants to ratchet up the pace in a poem, they can break these long lines and use enjambments. Longenbach describes two types, one that parses out the lines in predictable syntactical units and one that disrupts those units. The enjambment that parses the syntax honors the syntax. “While the lines are not end-stopped, they generally follow the normative turns of syntax, breaking it at predictable points rather than cutting against it. . .—the parsing line tends to emphasize the given contour of the sentence, reinforcing the way it would sound if it were written out as prose. (Ibid.55)
In a Rodney Jones poem “The Obsolescence of Thou,” his beginning lines parse out a sentence
Last heard in a country church, in a prayer
That an elderly spinster had decked out
In what manner she thought fitting
For heaven’s immoderate ears, it seemed
All Sunday, rite and benediction
(Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems 1985-2005. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006)
The risk of having a poem entirely parsed is that a poem can feel flat, too predictable. “By placing line so utterly in service of syntax, reducing the tension between syntax and line, a poem dominated by the parsing line can made its own lineation seem increasingly unnecessary.” (Ibid, 54)
But fortunately, there’s another enjambment tool a poet can use. The annotated enjambment violates the natural syntax and jazzes up a line. “Rather than following the grammatical units,” Longenbach explains, “the lines cut against them, annotating the syntax with emphasis that the syntax itself would not other provide.” (Ibid, 53) The term “annotated” means that, as with an annotation in an essay, it highlights and calls attention to the line break. Baron Wormser in his poem “Guys” disrupts the syntax in its opening line
After work and over a beer, Steven Gozerko
Is describing the paternal black hole that is
The faint but genuine hair-shirt his soul
Wears each manly, holding-down-the-fort day.
(Scattered Chapters: New and selected poems. Louisville: Sarabande Books, 2008)
At places where two words would normally go together—“Gozerko/is”, “is/the”, “soul/wears”—there’s a disruption of order. The subject is cut off from the verb, the verb from the object, and the noun from the verb, forcing the reader to leap to the next line to grab ahold of the meaning. What Leongenbach, says of William Carlos Williams who was a master of the annotated line, is true of Wormser, “his aggressively annotated lineation. . .drives not only the movement but the content of the poem.” (Ibid, 57)
A poet can use the annotated, parsed, and end-stopped line to modulate the pace of a poem. A well-designed poem can be carved like a canal cut in a straight line, never varying from it’s pattern. Formal poems do just that. The content is shaped to fit the form. A free verse poem is shaped by its content. The content dictates the form. A free verse poem is more like a river that lets the language flow across its natural banks— banks that have taken centuries to form and reform as the river finds its direction to the sea. If a poet can take the time to formulate a poem, knowing that its course will be different depending on the landscape of its sentences, then the poem will carry the reader to its end as naturally as water flows in its banks. When the poem needs to dwell in the quiet waters of a thought, end stop can arrest and pool the waters. When the poem needs to layer its images, each in separate pools, the parsed line can create a laddered fall of lines. When a poem needs to rush, the annotated line can speed it through rapids where the water-language slams and cascades into and over rocks. It’s not that any one type of line break works. “No particular line is valuable except in as much as it performs a dramatic function in relationship to other lines in a particular poem: one kind of line ending becomes powerful because of its relationship to other kinds of line endings.” (Ibid, 68)
The overall effect of line breaks is never easy to learn. But Longenbach tells us that
What matters is the way in which the syntax of the poem’s sentence moves through the lines of varying length. What matters is the way in which rhymes make us especially aware of what is happening to the syntax at the end of the lines. What matters is the way in which the consistent pattern of the stanza works against the variable grain of the sentences, forcing us to hear their sense in a particular way. . . . the power of lineation increases as the stanza moves forward, making the shape of the stanza feel not like a cookie cutter, but like a dramatic linear process.” (Ibid, 22)
The craft is in the variation, the recognition that certain sentences, if broken at certain points, will highlight the feelings that the poem is evoking. If, by breaking a poem into its natural sentence units, the poem can see how an noun split from the verb can draw attention both to the noun at the end of a line and the verb starting the next line, she can thereby orchestrate the ebb and flow of the poem. That’s the task. It’s made easier if the poet can learn to craft the lines consciously, using the three types of effects of line breaks. They are the tools that the poet needs to master.
Once a poet is immersed in writing the poem, the process is very similar regardless whether the content is shaping the form or the form is shaping the content. As such, the composition of poem, whether it’s working with a sonnet form or inventing a free verse form, is remarkably the same. The poet has to fidget with the length of the line, the range and variety of sentences, the different syntax, the interconnection of the images, the trajectory of the figurative language, the use of line breaks, the rhyme or sound repetition—all these elements of craft must be brought to his attention for a poem to finds its unique voice.
