Ask the Poet Guy

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poet Guy:

I am being constantly told that I should not use "ing" words in my poetry, that words like these are called gerunds and are bad for poems. Is this true? Sometimes I just feel like singing, or dancing, or praying, or playing.

Swimming in Gerunds


Dear Swimming:

At the risk of straying far from his area of expertise, Poet Guy will first point out that not all "ing" words are gerunds. As the incomparably more knowledgable folks at the Purdue Online Writing Lab explain here, a gerund is a verbal ending in "ing" that functions as a noun. In the sentence

Swimming is good exercise.​

"swimming" acts as a noun and the subject of the sentence. (To check this, replace it with a more obvious noun like "basketball.")

This form can often be confused with a participle, with is a verbal that often ends in "ing" but which functions as an adjective, as here:

The swimming pool was empty.​

In this sentence, "pool" is the subject and "swimming" is a modifier that describes what kind of pool is being discussed.

Now, to your question. Are gerunds bad for poems? Are participles?

Perhaps, in situations where they are used thoughtlessly or carelessly. A poet should always consider word choices for imagery and sound, and perhaps consider changing a phrase such as "like we were swimming in blood" to "as if we swam through blood" or "we thrashed through blood," all of which are, frankly, pretty clunky phrases. But should "ing" words simply be tossed out of poems willy-nilly? Eliot apparently didn't think so:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.​

Five "ing" words in seven lines--all participles, I think--that are used to great rhythmic and aural effect. The moral being, perhaps, make sure you understand why you are using a word, and that that word is the best word for your purpose.

PG

 

[twelveoone]

Dear Poet Guy:

I am being constantly told that I should not use "ing" words in my poetry, that words like these are called gerunds and are bad for poems. Is this true? Sometimes I just feel like singing, or dancing, or praying, or playing.

Swimming in Gerunds


Dear Swimming:

At the risk of straying far from his area of expertise, Poet Guy will first point out that not all "ing" words are gerunds. As the incomparably more knowledgable folks at the Purdue Online Writing Lab explain here, a gerund is a verbal ending in "ing" that functions as a noun. In the sentence

Swimming is good exercise.​

"swimming" acts as a noun and the subject of the sentence. (To check this, replace it with a more obvious noun like "basketball.")

This form can often be confused with a participle, with is a verbal that often ends in "ing" but which functions as an adjective, as here:

The swimming pool was empty.​

In this sentence, "pool" is the subject and "swimming" is a modifier that describes what kind of pool is being discussed.

Now, to your question. Are gerunds bad for poems? Are participles?

Perhaps, in situations where they are used thoughtlessly or carelessly. A poet should always consider word choices for imagery and sound, and perhaps consider changing a phrase such as "like we were swimming in blood" to "as if we swam through blood" or "we thrashed through blood," all of which are, frankly, pretty clunky phrases. But should "ing" words simply be tossed out of poems willy-nilly? Eliot apparently didn't think so:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.​

Five "ing" words in seven lines--all participles, I think--that are used to great rhythmic and aural effect. The moral being, perhaps, make sure you understand why you are using a word, and that that word is the best word for your purpose.

PG

Oh, Christ another guy they're gonna claim is me! Except you never hear the word "Gerund" out of my mouth.
Right On Poet Guy!

 

[champagne1982]

Welcome Poet Guy. Thanks for clarifying gerunds.

Dear Poet Guy,

What's the deal with capitalization? There are so many views on it that to have some definite explanation about this would be extremely helpful. I mean, can you help to give us a handle on the old school way of capitalizing every line or some present day ideas and beyond, to the extreme of e.e. cummings' deliberate absence of them? I know it's all a matter of style, but could you explain why this element of style is important?

 

[bflagsst]

Oh, Christ another guy they're gonna claim is me! Except you never hear the word "Gerund" out of my mouth.
Right On Poet Guy!

I thought it was you too. But it could be anyone. Oooo, spooky...

 

[twelveoone]

I thought it was you too. But it could be anyone. Oooo, spooky...

I though it was me when I saw Eliot pop of the box, but then I remembered I don't talk like that.

 

[bronzeage]

Dear Poet Guy,

Is there anyone who reads poetry besides poets and those who suffered assigned reading as part of a school course?

 

[bflagsst]

Dear Poppet Guy,

Will Modernism ever die? Was there anything original in poetry after Amy Lowell, EE Cummings, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens etc.?

Love,
Bflagsst

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poet Guy,

What's the deal with capitalization? There are so many views on it that to have some definite explanation about this would be extremely helpful. I mean, can you help to give us a handle on the old school way of capitalizing every line or some present day ideas and beyond, to the extreme of e.e. cummings' deliberate absence of them? I know it's all a matter of style, but could you explain why this element of style is important?

Dear champagne:

Thank you for the warm welcome. Unfortunately, Poet Guy can offer no definitive opinion on topics other than his favorite brew (Standing Stone Pale Ale), the all-time best Rolling Stones song ("Paint It Black"), or the world's tastiest cheese (Cougar Gold). He is happy, though, to offer his bloviated take on the topic, particularly as he has observed that comment on the capitalization of the first lines of poems is often as common a criticism that "experienced" poets use to put novice poets in their place as the ones slamming gerunds and participles, and often one delivered with the sniff of bemused disdain that accompanies some unfortunate's selecting the wrong fork at table or carrying last year's handbag. As you rightly say, it is a matter of style, convention, and fashion, and nothing generates such vitriol as arguments over fashion, be it over powdered wigs or sculpted pubic hair.

Advocates for only capitalizing first lines when the line also is the start of a sentence often argue that capitalization "makes the line difficult to read," or that it "interrupts the flow of the poem," that the practice is "old-fashioned" and "no one does that anymore." There is some truth to the first two of these, especially given the relative preponderance in contemporary poetry of non-capitalization, but the latter two arguments are easily countered by simply referencing some of the many contemporary poets who use capitalized first lines either routinely or frequently in their poetry--of the top of his head, Poet Guy might cite writers as diverse as Charles Simic, A. E. Stallings, Charles Wright, Carl Dennis, or Sarah Hannah.

The arguments about clarity and flow are more difficult to dispense with and, as suggested above, have considerable merit. However, these arguments can also be looked at as the other side of the kind of comments a supporter of capitalized lines might make, e.g. that the practice emphasizes the line as the fundamental structural element in a poem over the stanza or verse, and that the slight hesitation some experience in reading lines with starting caps imparts a certain rhythm to the poem that is often missing in non-initial capped verse.

As to the gradual erosion of the practice of starting capitals in contemporary poetry, Poet Guy would finger as the culprit the increasingly vernacular character of poems in an age where free verse is the dominant poetical form. Verse becomes ever more prosaic, dropping form, rhyme, meter, even sometimes metaphor in the pursuit of what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness."

At this point, Poet Guy fears that his answer is beginning to verge on reactionary screed, which is not his intent. He would rather say, wafflingly, that the decision to capitalize each line in a poem is an aesthetic decision for the poet, probably on a poem-by-poem basis. A poem written with the intent of, say, evoking a more formal reaction in the reader, or a slower reading pace, might be better written with initial caps. A poem written about an ordinary, especially conversational, everyday scene might benefit from lack of first letter caps. As with the poet's other tools--assonance, consonance, rhyme, meter, metonymy, etc.--first letter capitalization is a technique the poet can use to help shape the reader's impressions and not something that should be scorned out of hand.

As is probably quite obvious at this point, Poet Guy has refrained from addressing the example of a more idiosyncratic punctuation, as represented by E. E. Cummings (note the capitalization of his name). Cummings did not ignore or abandon capitalization, but rather made use of it in a highly stylized fashion, often inserting capitals at odd (from a grammatical sense) locations, probably for emphasis or visual effect. Unfortunately, in Poet Guy's opinion, Cummings' distinctive style has--much like Jackson Pollock's in painting--been directly responsible for a lot of bad art, in particular the affectation of some poets for writing poems with no capitals whatsoever (including writing "i" rather than "I"). Not wishing to sound like a poetical version of Glenn Beck, Poet Guy cheerfully acknowledges that many poems are well suited to being printed entirely in lower case. In poems written in the style of many east Asian forms, for example, capitalization often seems intrusive to the spirit of the poem. Poet Guy admits he is dismayed, though, with the number of poems written in lower case which seem to use atypical capitalization for no reason other than that it looks arty to the poet.

As with any issue related to capitalization, Poet Guy suggests that the poet carefully consider why he or she is adopting a particular stylistic device and what the device adds to the intended impact on the reader.

Finally, here is an intelligent and interesting article on the subject of capitalization in poems by Alberto Ríos, Regents' Professor of English at Arizona State University that you might find of value.

PG

 

[butters]

Happy Christmas/Yuletide/anyothernamedcelebrationyouchoosetocelebrate Poet Guy

At this point, Poet Guy fears that his answer is beginning to verge on reactionary screed, which is not his intent. He would rather say, wafflingly, that the decision to capitalize each line in a poem is an aesthetic decision for the poet, probably on a poem-by-poem basis.

a) i love 'reactionary screed' and 'wafflingly'
b) i agree completely with the point made about poem-by-poem basis
c) i'll forgive the pretentious third-personage as you make a lot of sense and made me smile as well. ta

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poet Guy,

Is there anyone who reads poetry besides poets and those who suffered assigned reading as part of a school course?

Dear bronzeage:

Poet Guy wonders if he detects a slight whiff of the sardonic in your question and is tempted to answer with a simple "yes," but such a response seems shabbily evasive even by his lowly standards, so he will attempt to enumerate some of the various classes of likely poetry readers:

• Non-poet spouses of poets.
• University English professors.
• Copy editors.
• Love-lorn sixteen-year-old girls, especially if the poem is about vampires.
• Rock stars (though they tend to specialize in Baudelaire and Rimbaud).
• Eulogists.
• French literary theorists.
• Visual artists, especially those affecting berets.
• Bob Zimmerman.
• Librarians.
• Students who enjoyed assigned reading as part of a school course.
• Garrison Keillor.
• Aging Beats, reminiscing about the past.
• Anyone in a bar on St. Patrick's Day (usually restricted to Yeats).
• That weird uncle of yours who wants to recite "Gunga Din" or Robert Service after downing a few.

This is the mereist sample of poetiphilic groups, and is parochially American in selection, but is intended to show that poetry is not just for old ladies with cats anymore.

PG

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Dear Poeting thinging Geezer
Is one mention from a gerund whore classed these days as 'being constantly told '? Mind you I've been away (and would be still if I hadn't been snowed in on my return from warmer climes) so I may have missed something, but if it was the one mention it must have been eating away for some time

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poppet Guy,

Will Modernism ever die? Was there anything original in poetry after Amy Lowell, EE Cummings, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens etc.?

Love,
Bflagsst

Dear Bflagsst:

Poet Guy, though a bit suspicious that there are strings attached to your question, sometimes wonders whether there has been anything original in poetry since Homer and Li Po. Certainly the confessional poetry of such poets as Snodgrass, Lowell, Plath, Sexton, and Olds is thematically original, if for no other reason than earlier poets (the Romantics, for example) usually had the grace to place a kind of artistic scrim between persona and person. Some confessional poetry--and Poet Guy is thinking of you, Anne and Sharon--seems more akin to an episode of The Jersey Shore than abstracted and polished art. Nonetheless, Poet Guy has great admiration for many of the confessional poets, despite his own inability to even form sentences in first person, let alone compose poems about his problems with erectile dysfunction or hemorrhoids.

Perhaps Poet Guy has the wrong kind of personal issues from which to create confessional poems.

Concrete poetry, slam poetry, sound poetry all seem to have brought varying degrees of originality to the world of poetry, in Poet Guy's opinion, though he does not necessarily equate originality with value nor non-originality with lack of value.

As to the question "Will Modernism ever die?" the simple answer is yes--though not with a bang, but a whimper.

PG

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poeting thinging Geezer
Is one mention from a gerund whore classed these days as 'being constantly told '? Mind you I've been away (and would be still if I hadn't been snowed in on my return from warmer climes) so I may have missed something, but if it was the one mention it must have been eating away for some time

Dear UnderYourSpell:

Despite the impression some Literotica habitués have that there are no other forums for the writing and criticism of poetry on the Internet, Poet Guy was answering (polemically, of course) an issue he has observed on multiple occasions in multiple locations on the world wide web. For example, this discussion, which I hope you will agree has nothing either to do with you or with this particular forum.

On the other hand, Poet Guy does not wish to irritate anyone, even inadvertently, and so offers this (mostly cribbed) apology:

If my Shadow has offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these missives did appear
And their weak and idle themes,
No more pointed than a dream.
Gentle, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, I will mend:
And, as I am an honest schmuck,
If we have unearnèd luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else this Poet liar call;
So, good night unto y'all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And P. Guy shall restore amends.​

PG

 

[Crescent_Kit]

Dear Poet guy, thank you for enlightening us here at Lit.

I give you a homemade cookie as thanks.

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear Poet guy, thank you for enlightening us here at Lit.

I give you a homemade cookie as thanks.

Dear Crescent_Kit:

Poet Guy thanks you for your approbation, but wants to make clear that he neither seeks, nor can provide much assistance in another's pursuit of enlightenment, seeing as the only quality he shares with the Buddha is the magnificence of masculine rotundity that is his figure. Poet Guy is more concerned about discussing poems and poetry (or, as it has gone so far, popping off in extending monologues about same) than in satori.

He also, somewhat glumly, must pass on the cookie, as Poet Gal has declared that the only sweets he shall partake of be the flow'ry citron of her lips.

However, if you see fit to leave that cookie on a plate in the hall, Poet Guy might find some way to consume it, despite the interdiction laid down by his helpmeet.

PG

 

[Epmd607]

Dear bronzeage:

Poet Guy wonders if he detects a slight whiff of the sardonic in your question and is tempted to answer with a simple "yes," but such a response seems shabbily evasive even by his lowly standards, so he will attempt to enumerate some of the various classes of likely poetry readers:

• Non-poet spouses of poets.
• University English professors.
• Copy editors.
• Love-lorn sixteen-year-old girls, especially if the poem is about vampires.
• Rock stars (though they tend to specialize in Baudelaire and Rimbaud).
• Eulogists.
• French literary theorists.
• Visual artists, especially those affecting berets.
• Bob Zimmerman.
• Librarians.
• Students who enjoyed assigned reading as part of a school course.
• Garrison Keillor.
• Aging Beats, reminiscing about the past.
• Anyone in a bar on St. Patrick's Day (usually restricted to Yeats).
• That weird uncle of yours who wants to recite "Gunga Din" or Robert Service after downing a few.

This is the mereist sample of poetiphilic groups, and is parochially American in selection, but is intended to show that poetry is not just for old ladies with cats anymore.

PG

I have a follow up question for PG.

Are there more readers of poetry for pleasure/enlightenment/entertainment or for scholarship/workmanship/clubmanship? And does it matter whether someone reads for pleasure or for some form of personal gain past a tiny tingle at a well-formed stanza?

 

[vrosej10]

Dear Poet Guy,

Is there anyone who reads poetry besides poets and those who suffered assigned reading as part of a school course?

In the case of erotic poetry, the horny who need a quick jerk and don't have the time for something longer...

 

[twelveoone]

Perhaps Poet Guy has the wrong kind of personal issues from which to create confessional poems.

Concrete poetry, slam poetry, sound poetry all seem to have brought varying degrees of originality to the world of poetry, in Poet Guy's opinion, though he does not necessarily equate originality with value nor non-originality with lack of value.

As to the question "Will Modernism ever die?" the simple answer is yes--though not with a bang, but a whimper.

PG

...and laughs..and them...smiles some more
John Ashbery????
your thoughts

 

[twelveoone]

Dear bronzeage:

Poet Guy wonders if he detects a slight whiff of the sardonic in your question and is tempted to answer with a simple "yes," but such a response seems shabbily evasive even by his lowly standards, so he will attempt to enumerate some of the various classes of likely poetry readers:

• Non-poet spouses of poets.
• University English professors.
• Copy editors.
• Love-lorn sixteen-year-old girls, especially if the poem is about vampires.
• Rock stars (though they tend to specialize in Baudelaire and Rimbaud).
• Eulogists.
• French literary theorists.
• Visual artists, especially those affecting berets.
• Bob Zimmerman.
• Librarians.
• Students who enjoyed assigned reading as part of a school course.
• Garrison Keillor.
• Aging Beats, reminiscing about the past.
• Anyone in a bar on St. Patrick's Day (usually restricted to Yeats).
• That weird uncle of yours who wants to recite "Gunga Din" or Robert Service after downing a few.

This is the mereist sample of poetiphilic groups, and is parochially American in selection, but is intended to show that poetry is not just for old ladies with cats anymore.

PG

smart ass, I love it. Truly astute list. Do you intend hanging around, I hope.

 

[twelveoone]

dammit, looks like the poet guy took sunday off

 

[PoetGuy]

I have a follow up question for PG.

Are there more readers of poetry for pleasure/enlightenment/entertainment or for scholarship/workmanship/clubmanship? And does it matter whether someone reads for pleasure or for some form of personal gain past a tiny tingle at a well-formed stanza?

Dear Epmd:

Though not a logician, at least not a professional one, Poet Guy finds the first of your two questions difficult to answer as it seems to be based on a false dichotomy. Surely many, perhaps most, readers involved in scholarship or those other ships have come to poetry-as-career through a love for, or at least interest in, poems and poetry in general. If so, one might be able to express the question in set-theoretic terms (though Poet Guy must here issue another caution--while he is no logician, he is an even worse mathematician):

If A = {The set of all poetry readers who read for pleasure, etc.} and B= {The set of all poetry readers who read for scholarship, etc.}, then the question is whether the relative complement of B in A is larger than the relative complement of A in B (i.e., Is A \ B > B \ A?).

Poet Guy finds himself exhausted after dredging his brain through such abstract concepts and, much as chicken breasts dredged in buttermilk and flour should be set aside for a bit before cooking, wishes to rest before continuing on to fry himself in the hot oil of decision.​

The second question posed by Epmd seems more a question of personal value than a general aesthetic, so Poet Guy will merely say that for himself it does not matter as he reads poems both for pleasure and for immense personal gain, having no desire to die each day for lack of what is found in them.

PG

 

[PoetGuy]

John Ashbery????
your thoughts

Dear twelveoone:

While not particularly well acquainted with Mr. Ashbery's work, Poet Guy has found those poems by Ashbery that he has tried to read seem to function as an excellent soporific. He doubts this would please Mr. Ashbery, though in all frankness it is doubtful that that poet, one of the most honored in contemporary American letters, would care all that much, as this article quotes his desire "to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about."

Poet Guy here must come down solidly, if gingerly, on the side of people who prefer poems that they can talk about and, presumably, understand. He recognizes that this is a personal bias that not all readers (or writers) of poems share and accordingly leaves them to their own world of mystified enjoyment of the incomprehensible.

PG

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Dear PG
Who is the guy with the insane giggle that appears from the shadows now and then to throw a spanner in the works?

 

[PoetGuy]

Dear PG
Who is the guy with the insane giggle that appears from the shadows now and then to throw a spanner in the works?

Dear UnderYourSpell:

Poet Guy admits that this query leaves him feeling a bit out of his league, as it does not, at least obviously, mention poetry as part of the question. He kicks himself over this contretemps, as one simple modification to his original thread title to name it "Ask the Poet Guy about Poetry" would probably have prevented this potentially embarrassing situation.

Nevertheless, Poet Guy is perniciously resilient, and in some ways pleased to extend his self-righteously opinionated obnoxiousness to Lit readers' general life. Plus he gets to show off his profound knowledge of UK slang in his identification of "spanner" as the equivalent of what we Americans would call a wrench.

So there.

To return to the original question, which seems offhand to be one more apropos to ask one's psychiatrist than a porn poetry site's agony columnist, Poet Guy suggests (in a rugby-style punt) that what you are experiencing is the everlastingly nasty hand of fate, personified as an Imp holding a Crescent Wrench--a kind of universal icon of dread that shadows anyone born after about 1865.

Poet Guy suggests you work on your kick save technique and be prepared for some bruises from that spanner.

He acknowledges that that giggle can be irritating and suggests you throw soda at the daemon from which it emanates. If things continue to worsen (for example, your walls begin to bleed, the dog walks on the ceiling), you may want to consider dialing 999.

Good luck.

PG

 

[butters]

Dear ...

Poet Guy suggests you work on your kick save technique and be prepared for some bruises from that spanner.

He acknowledges that that giggle can be irritating and suggests you throw soda at the daemon from which it emanates. If things continue to worsen (for example, your walls begin to bleed, the dog walks on the ceiling), you may want to consider dialing 999.

Good luck.

PG

this is profound

and made me smile out loud