Writers: Keep your promises

Though I've been a writer longer than an editor, I too often read instructional text with an editorial eye, noticing flaws most readers would fly past. One paragraph that caught my attention was in Mary Cohn Livingston's book, Poem-Making.

Traditionally English poetry was written for many centuries in a measured cadence that we call meter or metrics. This meter is made up of poetic units called feet. The most common of these feet are the iamb, the trochee, the anapest, and the dactyl. Learning about these feet enables poets to control the cadence of words, to recognize that meter can help the words to convey a particular mood" (p. 72).

When I first read the paragraph, I was surprised that Livingston omitted the comma that belongs after "Traditionally." I was more surprised that she introduced meter, feet, iamb, trochee, anapest, and dactyl without defining those terms. However, though her paragraph broke a basic rule of instructional writing, she gets away with it: The whole paragraph is intended only as an introduction to a set of related concepts (meter, feet, etc.).

It has a flaw, however, that wasn't obvious until I read the paragraph that followed it. The above-quoted paragraph ends with these words: "meter can help the words to convey a particular mood." That's transition wording. After reading it, I expected the next paragraph to discuss how words convey mood. It didn't. Nor did the one after it.

When a writer ends a paragraph with transition wording, she making a promise to readers that they expect she'll fulfill. When the writer fails to fulfill her promise, her credibility drops a notch.

The lesson: Writers make promises with their words. Readers expect those promises to be kept.

Marianne Moore and syllabics

A poet who had a unique way of structuring her poems was Marianne Moore. She enjoyed writing poems in the syllabic style. Syllabic verse involves "having lines based on number of syllables rather than on rhythmical arrangement of stresses or quantities" (WordNet).

One poem in which Moore exercised the use of syllabics is Poetry. Ian Lancashire counted the number of syllables in each line of the five-stanza poem.

Stanza	Line 1	Line 2	Line 3	Line 4	Line 5	Line 6
I	19	22	11	5	8	13
II	19	21	12	5	8	13
III	19	22	[7]	8	5	14
IV	19	22	10	5	8	13
V	19	12	11	5	8	13

Here is the first stanza of Poetry, without the indentations:

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

You can view the indented version here.

The words Moore used and the way she structured them reminds me of e. e. cummings. I love how she ends the first stanza with an indefinite article ("a"), how she indents the lines for effect, and how she continues "hair that can rise" with "if it must," placing the latter three words on a new line, indented.

There is a subtle delicacy to the first stanza, a harmony in which the last four lines' shortened lengths balance the first two lines' longer length. Poetry illustrates the power a poem can have when created by a poetic artisan who can so skillfully brush words upon paper, shaping them into a wondrous mix.

Judson Jerome still lives

In 1980, Judson Jerome's book, The Poet's Handbook, was published. It's still available today. It's lasted on store bookshelves for almost 40 years because, today, poets still use the same artistic tools that were used in 1980.

In the book's first section, titled How to Use This Book, Jerome wrote that "Good poetry ... is metrical writing."

Jerome elaborated: "Metrical means measured. A measure, or predetermined form, forces a poet to put his thoughts into a framework. The framework requires the poet to pick and choose, twist, to manage these contortions with grace. It is the tug-of-war between form and content that makes the art of the poem."

Writing poetry is challenging; it is a tug-of-war. But it's not just a battle between form and content. It's also a battle among the content. The framework alone is not the only thing forcing a poet to pick and choose, to weigh her words. The message the poet wishes to c0nvey also pushes and pulls words on and off the page.

Prose also imposes a framework.

When writing prose, its framework imposes two main restrictions upon you. First, write in sentences. Second, write in paragraphs. Prose writing is thus much less imposing than poetry writing, which can be viewed as an elevated form of prose writing. When writing a poem, its author is taking his prose to a higher level. He's willing to submit to a poetic form's constraints to gain its benefits.

Though poetry and prose differ in the framework they impose, they both depend on the same building material: words.

Given that words underlie all poetic forms, one way to begin a poem is by placing words on a page without attempting to impose any poetic framework upon them. The website textetc.com illustrates that technique by starting with a prose description.

Whittier's words about Maud Muller

Whittier wrote Maud Muller in 1854. In the book, The Complete Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Whittier provided some background information on the poem.

The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.

Listen to Charles M. Johnson recite Maud Muller by clicking the Play button below.

Kathleen, a daughter much beloved

The second stanza of Whittier's ballad, Kathleen, illustrates the poet's skill at compressing a substantial amount of meaning into a small space:

There was a lord of Galaway,
A mighty lord was he;
And he did wed a second wife,
A maid of low degree.

The third stanza introduces the second wife's evil ways.

She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
And drove away the poor;
"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
"I rue my bargain sore!"

The lord's second wife's cruelty extended far beyond bread. She harmed the maids, the poor, and even the lord's soldiers — the kern. Her misbehavior caused the lord to rue his bargain, but what bargain did he make? By "bargain" does he mean his marriage?

Then, in the fifth stanza, a significant shift occurs. The "song of old Ireland begins":

This lord he had a daughter fair,
Beloved of old and young,
And nightly round the shealing-fires
Of her the gleeman sung.

In the above stanza, Whittier uses two more words no longer in common usage: shealing and gleeman.

Shealing, also spelled "sheeling," is, according to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co. "A hut or small cottage in an exposed or a retired place (as on a mountain or at the seaside) such as is used by shepherds, fishermen, sportsmen, etc.; a summer cottage; also, a shed."

A gleeman was a traveling storyteller and minstrel during the Middle Ages; they were noted for their juggling ability.

So began the tale of the lord's daughter, a girl who had captured the hearts of many.

Kathleen, a ballad by Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote another poem about a young woman named Kathleen. For some reason, Whittier referred to Kathleen as a ballad rather than a poem.

Here's his comment on Kathleen:

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

Here's Kathleen's first stanza:

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

As he did with another poem, Maud Muller, Whittier begins Kathleen with a woman's name; however, unlike Maud Muller, the woman whose name begins Kathleen is not the woman whom the poem's about. Instead, she is the woman to whom the ballad is being sung.

Here's a listing of all Whittier's poems on Project Gutenberg.

Maud Muller is a dissatisfied maiden

Stanzas three through six of Whittier's poem, Maud Muller, contain a powerful message.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But, when she glanced to the far-off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast--

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

Muller was happy until she "glanced" at a distant town. That glance changed her glee to a frown. The glance silenced her song and stirred a "nameless longing." She hoped "For something better than she had known." Of special interest are Whittier's words that Muller "hardly dared to own" her wish.

The most powerful word in the last quote is possible the most powerful word in the whole poem: own. It's one thing to make a wish; it's quite another to "own" a wish. It's a much stronger form of attachment. It reveals how much she would like her life to change, a life she's been dissatisfied with. That dissatisfaction is shown in this line: "For something better than she had known."

Wanting more than one has is a common human condition, one that Whittier reveals in an uncommon way.

Stress in poetry

One of the more difficult concepts to understand when both reading and writing poetry is the concept of stress. Stress applies to syllables rather than to words. It's also called either accent or beat. To illustrate the concept, two lines from the poem Maud Muller will be used.

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

The first line contains eight syllables. "Muller" and "summer's" contain two syllables; the rest contain one. When I read that line, my voice rose when I said "Maud," the first syllable in "Muller," the first syllable in "summer's," and day. The syllables in which my voice did not rise are the unstressed syllables. This lines stresses go this way: up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The second line contains seven syllables. Only one of its words, "meadow," contains one syllable. My voice rose when I said "Raked," the first syllable in "meadow," "sweet," and "hay." It too reads like a roller coaster: up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The rhythm is like doing toe raises. Up, down, up, down. Stress, unstress, stress, unstress.

When the first of two consecutive syllables is stressed and the second one is unstressed, it's called a trochee.

Compare John Greenleaf Whittier's poem with this well-known nursery rhyme:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

In Jack and Jill's first line, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the first one. In the second line, however, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the second one ("fetch"). The last two sentences in the first stanza have the same "meter" as the first two. (A stanza is a set of lines that have been grouped together. A four-lined stanza is called a quatrain.)

As an interesting aside, rhyming lines that end on a stressed syllable are called masculine rhymes; whereas, rhyming lines that end on an unstressed syllable are called feminine rhymes. In Jack and Jill, as the second and fourth lines end in an unstressed syllable and rhyme, they're feminine rhymes. If the first and lines lines had rhymed, they would be masculine rhymes, as they end in stressed syllables.

The best way to learn about stress is to read poems aloud. Listen for the syllables you say louder and those you say lower.

You can learn more about poetry's basic elements here.

A poem worth reading

In the 19th century, a poet named John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a beautiful poem titled Maud Muller. It's about a woman (Muller) and a man who meet once, briefly, but never forget that meeting.

Here's the poem's first two lines:

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

The poem begins with Maud in a meadow on a warm, sunlit day, raking hay. How do I know the day is sunny and warm? I used my imagination, which this poem invites. If the weather were not warm and sunny, I doubt that Maud would be doing any raking. It's not easy to rake wet hay.

It's interesting that instead of writing that Maud "Raked the meadow full of hay," Whittier wrote "sweet with hay." Whittier writes not for the few who gain pleasure from reading esoteric, difficult to decipher poems, but for the many who enjoy reading poems within whose content lies a deceptively powerful simplicity.

Here are the poem's third and fourth lines:

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

It's obvious that Maud was not a woman of financial wealth. Her wealth was of another kind, one that cannot be bought in a store.

Whittier's skill with rhyme enhances the poem's effect, creating an aura about it that would have been much more difficult to effect if the words were written in a non-poetic form.

At this time in American history, when corporate greed and government mismanagement have dampened many people's spirits, it's a good time to be thankful for the works of men like Whittier, who've created works of beauty whose glow no cloud can lessen.