Do You Dare Talk about Syntax?

I love syntax but wouldn't dare mention it in public. It's not something normal people talk about. But then writers aren't all that normal, are they?

I was delighted, actually a bit thrilled, to discover an article in this month's The Writer's Chronicle on this very topic. "The Geography of Sentences" is by Emily Brisse, a high school English teacher (yay, Emily!) and writer. The title is particularly apt as this Minnesota writer is apparently also an amateur naturalist.

Adapted from Emily's MFA graduate lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts, the article tackles the subject few writers want to tackle: syntax. It's a topic we know is important, but it's a hard concept to pin down and talk about. Even when we're working on syntax, we often have a hard time defining what we're doing or articulating why it's important.

What do we mean when we say that a piece of writing is wonderful, beautiful, or moving? We might mean that we liked the images, the metaphors, the word choices. We have no problem pointing to examples of those. But we also probably mean that we liked the sentences, that is, the syntax, and that we have a harder time illustrating and talking about.

And yet, as Emily points out, syntax is one of the elements we need to work on in our revisions. She regards  the sentence as "one of our most powerful tools." To illustrate what she means by sentences with good syntax, the ones she refers to as "magical incantations," she frequently quotes from Louise Erdrich' s Love Medicine.

Although the focus of the article is on prose, poets will find the article just as valuable as prose writers will, maybe even more so. A prose writer can get away with a few bad sentences; a poet can't. Emily considers that old bugaboo—grammar—but she's more interested in how writers "manipulate chunks of language . . . to achieve certain effects," how they use syntax to increase the intensity of words and to move the reader. We can do this without being able to name the grammatical parts of the sentence.

What is the effect of a short sentence? a long one? an alternation between the two? a fragment? What happens if you move this part of your sentence to another part of the sentence? if you reverse the order of words? if you delay the verb until the end of the sentence? Emily is interested in how the arrangement of words in a sentence conveys and enhances meaning. She's also interested in the way a sentence looks (its shape), and she's interested in how it means. She also considers the syntax as symbol—something I'd never thought of before.

She speaks about parallelism, onomatopoeia, and repetition. She talks about breaking the rules. She talks about syntax.

I found this article enlightening and useful. It's making me look more closely at lines and sentences. It will do the same for you. It's even making me talk in public about syntax.

By the way, if you're not already subscribing to The Writer's Chronicle, correct that error as soon as possible.

Here's a syntax challenge for you: Using an egg as your topic, write a poem that's one long sentence. Keep it going for at least 30 lines of substantial length. Put it away. Go back to it. Now break that sentence into smaller parts. Some parts sentences. Some not.

Do Unto Other Poets

In the March/April issue of The Writer's Chronicle, Chapman Hood Frazier has an excellent interview with Gregory Orr. There's something in the interview that keeps circling around in my head. Frazier asks Orr how the poets he had as teachers influenced him as a poet, specifically, "how did their work itself influence you and your writing?" He wants to know not just what poet-teachers such as Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand taught Orr about the craft but also what influence their poetry had on his poetry.

Interesting question, but what interested me most was this part of Orr's response: "Reading their (Kunitz's and Strand's) poems was also a way for them to teach me indirectly through their writing. And it's very important to know your teacher's work. I sometimes have students working with me, and they've studied with me two or three years, and I realize they've never read anything I've written. That seems crazy, because why would you listen to somebody's opinion of your work if you don't know what they've written?"

It's that last part that has stayed with me. I keep thinking of a college student who came to a reading I gave several years ago. After the reading she came up to me and offered some lovely compliments. She moved closer to me and indicated that she wanted to touch me for "inspiration." She seemed to think that she could magically acquire what I knew by literally rubbing shoulders with me. I suggested that the best poetry teacher and the best source of inspiration is a poetry book. But she went home empty-handed. Now I understand that college kids often don't have the money for poetry books, but I sure hope they don't really believe that proximity to a poet is how one learns how to write poetry.

I've also been asked several times by other poets to write a review of their latest book. I write several reviews each year—it's kind of a mission of mine, a way of supporting poets, and it allows me to hope for the same kind of support—but these requests sometimes come from poets who I'm sure haven't bought or read any of my books. They might, at best, have read a few of my poems in journals. I'm not inclined to say Yes to the request.

Likewise with blurbs. I generally feel honored to be asked to write a blurb for a forthcoming book—but only when it comes from someone who I know has supported my work. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. I've been asked to write blurbs for people who clearly have virtually no knowledge of my work beyond having read a poem or two online. And I have to wonder, as Orr wondered, why they'd want words of praise from someone whose work they don't know very well? And why they would expect my support when they haven't given me theirs?

One more thing that puzzles me: Why do poets with forthcoming books or chapbooks ask me to pre-order and pay for their collections when they've never bought one of my books already in print? I receive these requests fairly often as there are several presses which require their poets to solicit advance sales. The number of advance sales then determines the print run. Although I do not like this business model at all, if the request comes from a poet who I know has supported my work, then I pre-order. But sometimes the request comes from a poet who I'm quite sure has not availed himself of my work. I'm not sure why some people would ask or expect me to pay for the publication cost of their work when they haven't offered me their support.

Most poets I know are generous, and I hope that I am too, but, at the risk of sounding cranky, I want to suggest that people asking for services or favors or time need to remember to be generous too. They need to remember The Golden Rule of Poetry.


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