Another Grammar Rant

Sometimes small things irritate me.

Right now, I have just finished reading a very good short story. It held my interest in the plot and characters and their development but ... Several times the writer used the verb 'to lay' when he should have used 'to lie.' No great matter, you might say, people make mistakes. True enough, but this was the same mistake over again. Several times.

I admit to my own faults and quirks, but I usually catch them when I reread a raw manuscript. Before publication, an editor or proof reader should catch them. Or are line editors and proof readers extinct, wiped out by Spellcheck and the like?

The difference (with exceptions, of course. After all, this is the English language.) is that 'lay' is a transitive verb, 'lie' is intransitive. In other words, 'lay' means something is being done to something else. Action. 'Lie' refers to a passive state of being. No action. The only thing they have in common is that the simple past tense of 'lie' is 'lay' which is the present tense of the verb 'to lay.' In a small example: "I lay the book down. (Action, now.) It lay on the floor before I found it. (No action, and in the near past.)

Somewhere in my first few years of dealing with our language, I realized the difference; I've never, even in conversation to my knowledge, interchanged these verbs. In conversation the misuse doesn't seem as glaring, probably because there is greater context. But printed on the page, or on a website? Very annoying.

I tell you no lie.

Changing Times, Changing Language

One of the things that struck me last month at the Labour Day parade was how the language and terminology of work and the workers has been changing. When, as a young working man, I began to involve myself in the labour movement all the words and slogans pertaining to rights and benefits that had been most identifiably the basis of the movement since the beginning of the industrial age were still current and still had the same meanings.
But now. Imagine a workers' celebration without talk of 'us' against 'them,' nothing about 'the bosses,' no reference to striking for increased wages, better conditions, shorter hours, increased benefits. The only recognizable sloganeering is about pension rights, not so much demanding the workers' rights to a pension but crying out against the international conglomerates' ability to erode pension benefits almost at will. That's not imagination, that was the reality. Joe Hill should be raging in his grave.
But when our concept of work changes, as it does more and more, so must the language change. When work was considered as physical labour, the time spent doing so was important to a person's physical well-being. Now such activity is becoming less and less a part of our culture.
A person who spends an inordinate amount of time at his job is no longer considered a 'slave' but more likely a 'workaholic,' one who chooses to spend more time at work for whatever reason. Bosses and employers have become faceless entities without any presence against which to direct protests. And so the workers' language must change.
The real force for change and workers' protection must necessarily be one of revolution. The problem seems to be that the work force has been fragmented. There are no longer thousands of people working together in one place who can unite into a single entity. A lot of the work done for a large corporation is handled by a few persons operating machinery or computers; much of it is outsourced to small businesses or individuals under contract. The old terminology no longer applies.
A revolution that cannot gather together like-minded people in one place needs to be fuelled by language. The possibility of pamphleteering still exists but a far greater force would seem to be the newer electronic media. It has already started with petitions using e-mail and/or facebook. The continuing growth will see new terms and language.
An example of the changes in the labour movement is happening locally. The Workers' Art and Heritage Center is sponsering a project looking for new labour songs for the new labour reality. Tonight during the monthly Art Crawl (an open house of a number of art galleries in one district) one of its proponents was seen going up and down the street pulling a cart – emblematic of the old concept of work – but singing a song dealing with the more recent concept of labour.
A post-industrial society needs to express itself using not only the age-old concept of work songs but also the post industrial media.
And an information language for this information, post-industrial world.

Language in the Future

Sometimes I become very aggravated by some of the ways that people are using language today. It seems the atmosphere is full of acronyms and short cuts that take away from the beauty and meaning of full round sounds.

I suppose it is part of the normal development of speech and communication. We’ve come a long way from inflected grunts. As the human race developed, the needs and ways of communicating evolved too. Vocabulary increased, often borrowing from other languages. Meanings of words and phrases changed as need directed. Sounds could be recorded, first in the symbols of runes and alphabets, more recently as sounds themselves.

An alphabet seemed the perfect way to preserve language except for a few flaws in the system. Not every community agreed to what sound was portrayed by what character, nor on how the sounds/letters should fit together to carry a meaning all knew instantly. In the flush of the printed word attempts were made in several languages to standardize words and their usage. Language, however, will not be contained by regulations.


Change is still happening, partly through the development of new technologies for disseminating and storing language and partly through the laziness of many of us who use them. Acronyms have become so common that they have become a means of identifying things unrelated to the word the acronym spells. Text messaging and electronic “chat” demands getting the most with the least and produces short cuts in the language that sound fine but look ugly.

So what? you may ask. But the beauty of language is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. To destroy that beauty, even to neglect it just for expediency, would seem to me to be a decline back towards barbarism. Without the fullness and diversity of all the sounds we have available language becomes stunted, withers.

Change, as we all know, cannot be stopped. But at the same time what we have built needs to be preserved. Poets in a society have the responsibility to ensure the continuation of the beauty. They are the ones who work with its intricacies and possibilities in ways no other can.

So one of the first concerns of the poet is the beauty of language, of proclaiming and propagating it. It disturbs me to find poets putting forth prosaic language just because it might appeal to more people. Poems should sing as well as communicate.

Just because so many people are doing it is no reason for a poet to dilute the power of the spoken or written word.

So wht r u w8tng 4?

The Poor Man's Riches

Some time ago I was listening to a BBC interview with the Australian poet Les Murray about the compilation of a distinctly Australian dictionary, the Macquarie Dictionary. One of his casual remarks, one of several I would have liked to hear him expound, was that “words are the poor man’s riches.” That left it up to me to think it out for myself.

I considered where new words come from. A number come from writers for ad firms or politicians, those using language to sell goods, services, actions, or personalities to people not as linguistically nimble. (Cf. the Afghanistan war: the precision of technological weaponry vs. the dreaded roadside IED, the Improvised Explosive Devise or as the military don’t want to put it, “home-made bomb.”) But many more begin among those who are not a part of the mainstream of business, culture, government, or other such matters. A richness of words has always come from the poor.

The language is infiltrated, and usually enriched, by the acceptance of slang. I can remember when it was not proper to refer to children as young goats; now even the most refined parents will praise their “kids.” When I was young I used to laugh and sing: I was gay. I still laugh and sing but I am no longer “gay”; the primary meaning of the word has been changed. As an activist in the 1960s I found the most powerful word referring to authorities was the little word “pig.” However, it has now lost much of that ability to aggravate and irritate because it became common if not quite acceptable.

Words continue to take root among our common “word-hoard,” our treasury of language. They come from the usage of criminals and other marginalized people, or from groups who have developed a need for a common terminology that then spreads into common usage (e.g. words from the surfer and hippie subcultures, “Valley-speak,” hip-hop terminology.) Words from banking and business do occur but have far less chance of becoming part of our daily speech unless propagated through extensive media usage.

When words are the only resource you have you learn to use them with discrimination. You become aware of their strengths, what they can do for you and to you. It is only a small step from realizing the power of words to seeing their value. If money is power, then the power of words is riches. Who knows this and uses it carefully will never be poor.

Blessed are the rich in language for they are the rich in spirit.

Diminutives in Language

I just want to take a moment here to expound on one of my few bugaboos of the English language, a fact I have learned to tolerate but not to like. I think the language would be more fully rounded, in a sense more musical, more pleasing to the ear, if it had a predominant and consistent suffix to express both comparative smallness in size and familiarity or endearment. Other languages do, and I admire the way it works for them.

Let’s take a look at two different languages. Spanish, as an example of the Romance languages, employs a few diminutive forms quite readily, e. g. “–ito (m), -ita (f)” and “–illo (m), -illa (f).” Dutch, like English a Germanic language, uses “-je” (often with a preceding consonant) to designate small size or familiarity; the diminutive is used with nouns, names, adjectives and other word forms.

It’s not that English doesn’t have diminutives, it’s just that nearly all of them are borrowed from other languages: -ette (et) from the French creating words like parkette and caplet. From Old Norse comes “-ing” in duckling and darling (familiar for “dear”). The “-y” or “-ie” comes from the Scottish (who themselves use an adjective “wee” rather than a suffix.) The Germanic “-kin, -ken” is very infrequent.

The problem is that none of the suffix constructions are productive, that is, used in common word formation in daily speech. And that, in my opinion, is one of the greater flaws of the English language.

Music or Words, the Presentation

I recently attended a concert of Indian music performed by the local sitar master, Neeraj Prem. I have enjoyed such music for a long time, since I first heard Ravi Shankar’s work on the sound track of Pather Panchali and purchased a recording of his performance in the mid 1960s. The depth of the emotional experience this music evokes continued to amaze me.

Ravi Shankar was the main exponent of bringing the classical music of Northern India to the Western world. His understanding and ability to explain won a following of Western musicians as diverse as Yehudi Menuhin, Jean-Pierre Rampal, John Coltrane, and George Harrison. But something Prem said about the music echoed what I had learned from Shankar. Western music is written down and precise, almost mathematical in harmony and counterpoint. It is based on scores to be followed. The ragas for sitar are based in mood, colour, and emotion as expressed by a basic pattern from which the musician works. A form that approaches this is the jazz soloist improvising over and around the basic chart of his piece of music.

So often in these entries I find myself talking of music. What has this one to do with poetry?

Well, late that evening as I was lying in bed preparing for sleep it suddenly struck me that the way to appreciate the different musical performances was much the same as the way to appreciate different presentations of poetry. For poetry on the page, in a book, you need an analytical mind to see the relationships between phrases and images. The layout, line breaks, stanzas, all help to guide the mind into processing the words. But spoken word material, though coming from similar fundamentals, depends on the ear alone to register. The mind cannot take time to analyze, but must therefore react viscerally and emotionally.

This also may be a partial explanation why I have an unusual reaction when I hear someone else read my poems. Rather than the sender, I become the receiver but with a much different perspective than any one else. In a way I become both ends of a conversation.

The poem on the stage is not the poem on the page. Not even combining an audio-visual presentation would work; the visuals would overwhelm the audio. It always does.

The Sound of Emptiness Revisited

Back in June of ’09 I remarked on poetry that seemed to be all flash and no substance. I want to revisit the concept because a book-length manuscript came across my desk that embodied it. Out of the sixty or more poems only two or three moved me. Those seemed to build their images around a recognizable theme; the others seemed extremely unconnected.

In fact they reminded me of the “Where’s Waldo” puzzles, you know the themed scenes populated by a multitude of human figures. The trick is to find which one has all the recognizable tributes of the “Waldo” character. Imagine how frustrating play would be if there was no Waldo included! That’s how I felt about those poems. The fact that they were devoid of any customary rhythm or rhyme scheme only emphasized their meaninglessness.

There’s nothing wrong with setting down words or sounds without a precise, discernable meaning. “Sound” poets do it all the time. But they will admit that it works better on stage than on the page. The flow of words/sounds creates a mood enhanced and emphasized by poetic devices: rhyme (both end and internal), other repetition, defined even if changing rhythms. The fundamentals that please the ear and mind.

It reminded me of a poem I wrote some years back; it was never published and was never meant to be. It’s a piece I liked to perform live on stage because the way the sounds driven by rhythm and repetitions connected with the audience. If it established a sentiment, a mood, all to the good; if it didn’t it was still a sequence of pleasing sounds. I’ll publish it here so you can see what I mean.

5ntwenty

when craven vultures songbirds be
new babes laugh hanging in each tree
through ruby filtered light you see
one trail is free

radiance crowns the powdered rack
fishermen mourn their linen sack
and oil now burns the broken back
the clabbered hack

promises mend a shirt of snow
and buttered railways slide below
the trees fall off the wheels to know
these weights won’t go

all frozen lobsters on a kite
sing for a nose to free the night
we vanquish chip-shops in delight
and leave to write

so shine the copper lilies round
run with the growling shaded hound
the magic ice flows underground
while we resound

The poem as it exists has no obvious meaning. Its “poetry” hangs on the well defined frame of rhythm and rhyme scheme. For me the joy was in the movement of the mouth, the embouchure, as vowel slipped toward vowel and consonant shaped to the next consonant.

If that joy is not there, what are we left with? Ink spots on a page? Or from the stage a cacophony?

I have written other poems that had no obvious meaning but because the way images interacted, complimented each other, and were held by a common structure, they carried a discernable meaning that could be touched. Several of these have been published and well received.

So, does meaning have to be obvious? No. But a way must be shown that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion by the reader/listener. Otherwise you are pumping darkness into a place where there is no light.

Foundations of Poetry

Free verse and its variations have been around long enough that every person believes he (or she) can write poetry, granting that some may be better than others. With this comes the idea that any poem written in form and meter is old fashioned and out of date. Not so. I always stress that you can not write “free verse” until you understand what verse has been freed from, and that to be good poetry it needs to retain its roots, its foundation.

Part of that foundation is rhythm. All of our speech consists of syllables that are either stressed or unstressed; it is by arranging them in a pattern pleasing to the ear that we begin to create poetry. This is the basis of the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, rhythmic but without rhyme. The measure of this rhythm is expressed as feet. There are a limited number of such feet; a poet would be well served to acquaint himself with them.

To build such pleasing patterns is the craft of poetry, the work that comes after the inspiration. Words and phrases that seemed so natural but will not fit into a pattern, a rhythm, need to be replaced by something that doesn’t completely alter the proposed meaning. English is a language rich in such words.

And free verse? Free verse is not constrained by such tradition, is it? Here comes the distinction between prose and poetry. Prose, whether in a novel or the daily newspaper, has never had to follow such patterns. Verse, whether free or formal, must or it may lapse into prose. The least measured of free verse must have a cadence that the ear recognizes as pleasurable even if the mind does not.

Then what about the claims of rhyme? Modern poetry, especially free verse, doesn’t rhyme so why should a poet concern himself with such an outdated concept?

True, rhyme at the endings of lines is not as prevalent or obvious as it was when it was used as an aid to memorizing poems. Most of us no longer memorize but read poems stored on the page. However, rhyme and all its many fascinating variations are such an integral part of poetry that it can not be denied its place.

We spoke of rhythm, of the patterns that make up a good poem. One of the most important ways to emphasize the recurrent patterns of sound has always been through repetition. When the repeated sound or combination of sounds came at the end of a measured line of poetry, we had “end rhyme.”

But to emphasize the pattern the poet can also repeat the sounds in other, related ways that are equally pleasing. Internal rhyme is like end rhyme but doesn’t occur at the ends of lines. The repetition of consonants at the beginning, the end, or even in the middle of words can give a sense of that pleasure the ear is listening for, the repetition of vowels more so. All these and many more go to enhance that basic pattern.

It is my belief that the poet who completely ignores the basics of poetry that have always worked is doomed to lapse into writing that no ear will recognize as poetry. Rhythm and rhyme is to poetry what time and tone are to music, what heart beat and breathing are to the body: essential.

A mastery of these fundamentals can lead you onto many new roads in language and poetry.