Conjurers: Magicians can conjure with smoke and mirrors; writers make magic with words. Using language, Gabriel García Márqueznot only conjures the village Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude, but he pulls gypsies out of his top hat and releases them to travel around town on a flying carpet. Equally magical is the ability to materialize realistic images. Poet Nick Bozanic describes the conjuring tasks he faced one morning: “What is the exact quality of light at 7 a.m. in late September, and 7 a.m. in early May? What is the difference between waking up in the morning when you’re eight and when you’re thirty-eight? How does it feel to be chained to a tree? How does it feel to catch a trout by the tail with your bare hands?”
Ducks in Bottles: There are many variations of this koan: “There’s a duck in a bottle; how do you get it out of the bottle without harming the duck or breaking the bottle?” The answer given by the master is, “It’s out.” My semi-enlightened understanding is that the koan is about the potency of language in the service of imagination. I put the duck in the bottle with my words, and I can take it out with my words.
One task taken on by most children is to use words to induce someone to look where there is nothing to see (“Made you look! Made you look!”). The writing conjurer’s job is more difficult: “Made you look! Made you see!” (Rest assured that the poor duck you saw in the previous paragraph is now happily quacking his tale to any duck who will listen.)
The Idea of Things: The poet Charles Reznikoff said in an interview I did with Janet Sternberg: “You start with something that moves you and you state it as simply and as directly as possible, without saying you’re moved, but in such a way that the reader will also be moved by it. This is the way I try to write.” Reznikoff backed that up with an “ancient authority,” quoting Wei T’ai, an 11th-century Chinese poet: “Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling.” Similarly, William Carlos Williams famously writes (in “A Sort of Song”): “No ideas / but in things.” And perhaps the single most proffered advice in workshops is “Show, don’t tell.”
Yes, of course. But, also: Exquisite, precise language can elevate ideas and feelings to the level of things. In 1938, at the age of 73, fifteen years after being awarded the Nobel Prize, William Butler Yeats ended hispoem “Politics” with this couplet:
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
No images, no similes, no details, no allusions, no gypsies on flying carpets, no ducks in or out of bottles. We don’t see her or his arms. You don’t have to look up any of the words or consult critical texts for obscure references. Countless writers before Yeats used each of those words, but Yeats was the first to put them in that particular order (as Beethoven did with the two pitches that comprise the first four notes of his Symphony No. 5).
Take a minute and re-create what Yeats did. Write those lines longhand. Thirteen words, fourteen syllables. Simple? Yes. Simplistic (as in “unrealistically simple”)? No.
If simple were easy, then everyone would do it. Running a marathon is simple; it’s not easy.
The Elements of Voice: What is voice? The simple (simplistic?) answer: the words you choose and how you arrange them (just as one’s fashion style comprises the selection and juxtaposition of clothing). Do you have to achieve a distinctive voice, a way with words that tells the reader it is you (or a writer like you) behind the page? Not necessarily, but the reader should feel there is a writer behind the words. It is not as important for you to develop a consistent voice as it is for each piece you write to have a voice, which can change from piece to piece (just as your outfits vary depending on what or whom you are dressing for).
It is easier to experience voice than to describe it. Listen to Thomas Pynchon’s voice at the opening of The Crying of Lot 49: “One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time . . .” Now, listen as Pynchon departs 1960s California for Colonial America in Mason & Dixon: “Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,— the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen . . .”
Contrast Pynchon’s voices with the opening of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Battler”: “Nick stood up. He was all right.” Or Harold Pinter in Betrayal, whenRobert’s wife admits that she has been having an affair with his best friend. Robert responds: “Ah. Yes. I thought it might be something like that, something along those lines.”
Voice can emanate from the ability to capture the music of colloquial speech. Boris Pasternak writes, “People discovered oratorical and melodic tendencies in my poems. This is not correct. They are there no more than in the speech of any ordinary person.” Or, the writing can be composed on instruments that have been tuned differently from everyday speech, and the reader’s ear needs to adjust. James Earl Jones writes about performing in August Wilson’s Fences: “August was a poet before he became a playwright, and poetry is still part of the language his characters speak. You don’t always hear people talk like that in real life, but you wish you could.”
If your instrument makes quirky sounds, you might be developing a distinctive voice. But quirkiness does not always make for good writing; you might just be out of tune.
Pegs and Holes: Writers spend a lot of time with pen poised in the air or fingers hovering over the keyboard, seeking out or waiting for the precise word. For an early draft, it may be best to settle for the roundest square peg at hand to go into the squarest round hole; otherwise, you may lose momentum. Later, you can look around for the right pegs or drill different holes.
Temporary words may wind up fitting after all. The lyrics for Tea for Two were originally intended as place-setters, but were never replaced. “Scrambled eggs, oh, my baby, how I love your legs” didn’t fare as well in what became “Yesterday.” (When Oscar Hammerstein was working on “Do Re Mi,” how long did he search for a definition of la before he reconciled himself to “A note to follow so”?)
You don’t even have to find a place-setter word—just leave an empty place. Ring Lardner claimed to New Yorker editor Herbert Ross that he followed this method to the extreme, writing “a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper” and then going back to fill in the spaces.
As Compared to What?: In discussing André Breton’s notions on surrealism, Anna Balakian writes that the value of a metaphorical image “consists not in an equivalence but in the subtraction of one set of associations from the other. The greater the disparity, the more powerful the light, just as in electricity the greater the difference in potential of the two live wires the greater the voltage.”
Comparing Juliet with the sun doesn’t mean she is 93 million miles away and you would be immolated if you went near her (though Romeo might have had a longer life if he had kept his distance).
Robertson Davies creates this electric simile in his novel Fifth Business:“My colleagues looked uncomprehendingly, like cows at a passing train.”
Colleagues compared to cows. Maximum voltage.
As an homage to Davies, I tell students: “Occasionally you may write something that will evoke cow looks from your classmates.” Sometimes, the looks I get after saying this makes me feel like a passing train.
All aboard!
adapted from The Writing Workshop Note Book