In Memoriam: Galway Kinnell and Mark Strand

Sadly, two great American poets have died in recent days: Galway Kinnell and Mark Strand. I know Kinnell best for his astounding poem "The Bear," a sort of narrative-inner monologue during which an Inuit hunter pursues a polar bear he has wounded by baiting seal blubber with a sharpened bone. Read it some time; it's well worth reading.

The one Mark Strand poem I recall better than any others is "Eating Poetry," which expresses the kind of irrational, exultant joy in reading and language that all writers have experienced at one time or another. Here is this great (and admittedly, somewhat bizarre) short poem in its entirety:

"Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.

Her eyes are sad

and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.

The light is dim.

The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,

their blond legs burn like brush.

The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.

When I get on my knees and lick her hand,

she screams.

I am a new man.

I snarl at her and bark.

I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

RIP Galway Kinnell and Mark Strand.

When to stop revising … plus a Veterans Day message

One of the thorny questions a writer contends with is how to know when a work is finished. Revision is essential to good writing, but when is enough enough and how can you tell? Theoretically, revision could go on forever, but it has to end eventually or nothing would ever be published. Perhaps that point is reached when the writer finally throws his or her hands up in the air? As French poet Paul Valery famously remarked, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

The whole question can seem ridiculous, and American poet Billy Collins penned a satiric poem, “January in Paris,” using Valery’s quote as a starting point. Collins writes:

I would see the poems of Valery,

the ones he never finished but abandoned,

wandering the streets of the city half clothed.

Most of them needed only a final line

or two, a little verbal flourish at the end,

but whenever I approached,

they would retreat from their makeshift fires

into the shadows -- thin specters of incompletion,

forsaken for so many long decades

how could they ever trust another man with a pen?

With my own writing, when I start to change words and then change them back again, I figure I’m getting close to being done. In general, I find that my first drafts are wordy and ridden of clichés. Then I tend to over-explain (a bad habit among teachers) in my second draft, which actually lengthens my already overwritten draft. Finally, in the third draft, I start to tackle the formidable job of cutting and pruning.

I fervently believe in revision. I’ve always doubted the Wordsworthian assertion that accomplished writing springs from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” preferring to believe that writing is a craft that rewards the hard labor of revision. Accomplished writing springs from a lot of practice -- the same as accomplished singing, carpentry, baseball playing, you name it.

As yesterday was Veterans Day, I am reminded of a poem I wrote earlier this year as a tribute to SFC Dan Murphy (U.S. Army-Retired), an old friend and fellow former soldier who died after battling a long illness. I wrote the poem below in a surge of emotion the morning after Murph died. Then I started to revise it, but I soon stopped, believing that tinkering too much with the poem would ruin its emotional intensity and honesty. Here is the poem; you can judge for yourself:

Lay Down Your Rifle: A Poem in Memory of SFC Dan Murphy, Boys from Leeds, RIP May 28, 2014

Lay down your rifle, old friend,

This you have earned, your eternal rest,

And we who followed you in war or peace are left behind,

We who knew you and loved you best.

You’ve gone away on that final dawn patrol,

A ghost in the shadows no foe can see,

No pain can touch you, no weakness, nor fear.

Take this soldier’s moment to be free.

Until that day when we too shall cross the river

And slip into the trees, and rally again on some distant shore,

Lean back on your rucksack, rest at ease old friend,

But hold your ground, and stay free forevermore.

-- written by John R. (Bob) Dial, former SSG, 1-105 Infantry, 27th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (L.I.), May 29, 2014

It’s not a perfect poem, and sophisticated critics would probably ridicule it as doggerel, but I still believe that it is complete and finished. The poem also reminds me that our freedom to write and express ourselves would not exist without the sacrifice of so many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Happy Veterans Day to all veterans. We must never abandon them.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Birth of a word: systemness?

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain photo with
text added by author.

I was all set to rail against abuse of language in this blog post (and I may still, depending on where my rambling thoughts take me as I compose; writing is thinking, after all). Recently I received an email at work containing this bullet point: “Aligning our strategies to a point of coherent systemness.” And I thought, systemness? What the %!&$ is that?!? Houston, we have achieved incoherence! Then my wife told me that “systemness” is a term she hears often in the health-care management field. So I googled systemness (there are two words that didn’t exist 20 years ago) and sure enough wikipedia (another recently-coined word) defined it as a neologism that means “the state, quality, or condition of a complex system, that is, of a set of interconnected elements that behave as, or appear to be, a whole, exhibiting behavior distinct from the behavior of the parts.” Well, butter my biscuit, who knew?

New words have continually been invented throughout the history of the English language. In fact, Shakespeare was one of the most prolific and playful coiners of new words of all time. That is not to say that “systemness” is worthy of Shakespeare, or even worthy of a dictionary entry at the moment. At best, it is management-speak jargon. If it manages to gather enough cachet in our culture, perhaps “systemness” will one day merit a dictionary listing. Again, that is not to say that each word in the dictionary is an equally worthy word. I once read this word in a piece of writing: “originization.” This will always be a horrid word, even if it were to snake its way into the lexicon. Basically, this writer was trying to think of the noun form of the verb “originate” but proceeded to lengthen the word instead of bothering to think of the perfectly good (and shorter) noun form that already exists: origin. I’m still not sure about “systemness.” My gut instinct is to despise it. But only time will tell the fate of this so-called word.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Animate a moribund lead sentence: don’t let your first impression become a last impression

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “a first impression is a lasting impression”? Well, be forewarned: in writing, a first impression can become the last impression if you fail to whet the reader’s desire to keep reading.

If only I had a dollar for every dull first sentence I’ve ever read, such as:

The book I chose to write about is ...

My book report is about …

In contrast to coma-inducing lead sentences like those two above, check out the opening of Simon Winchester’s book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary:

Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.

Now this is a lead sentence guaranteed to generate desire in a reader to keep reading (as opposed to “The book I chose to write about is The Professor and the Madman…). How can any reader not want to learn how and why “one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history” took place in some remote English village nobody has ever heard of before? What’s the story behind that? Winchester, of course, continues to deliver throughout the opening chapter (the preface, actually) until we discover at the end that the meeting was between a famous lexicographer and the doctor who has helped him enormously in the task of creating his monumental dictionary -- a doctor who turns out (unbeknownst to the lexicographer) to be an inmate in an asylum for criminal lunatics. Modern literary history isn’t your cup of tea? Try the same technique with a different topic: “Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable events in sports history took place on a dusty field in 1972, in an abandoned oil-company town in Oklahoma.” If you are a sports fan, wouldn’t you want to find out about this event lost to obscurity?

Notice too how Winchester (or maybe his book editor) knows how to pique interest using the book’s subtitle, which juxtaposes the salivating terms murder and insanity with the august Oxford English Dictionary. How can such unlikely things be paired together, the book browser wonders?

There are, of course, probably more than a thousand and one ways to entice the reader’s interest at the start of a piece of writing, but one of them certainly is NOT “The book I chose to write about is…”

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

An everyday writing mistake that occurs every day

Here’s a mistake I see every day in student writing: confusing “everyday” with “every day.” The former is a one-word adjective and thus should be used to modify a noun. For example, writing is an everyday activity for me. The adjective “everyday” (one word) modifies the noun “activity.” Alternatively, “every day” (used as two words) is already an adjective phrase (an adjective plus a noun). The noun “day” is modified by the adjective “every.” This phrase means the same as “each day.” Writing is an activity I pursue every day. (While I’m on the topic, never write the horribly redundant phrase “each and every day” -- or even worse, "each and every single day"). For some reason, my high school students invariable reverse the usages and use “every day” as an adjective and “everyday” as a adjective phrase. I’m not sure why, but I see this error every day.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Hmmm … do we need less fewers or fewer lesses??

Some writers mistakenly swap words that serve similar functions. One example of this phenomenon involves the word pairing “less” and “fewer” (or “less than” and “fewer than,” depending on usage). You should use “less” when describing a mass that has no discrete elements (like oil or milk), but use “fewer” when describing something made up of quantifiable units (like eggs or chairs). For example, never write “I saw less than 100 people at the concert” because theoretically you are able to count the number of concert-goers in attendance. In this case, use “fewer than 100 people” instead. By the same token, you would never write “I have fewer milk now than I used to.” That just sounds wrong, right? Instead (of course) you would write “I have less milk now than I used to.”

A related example involves the word pairing “amount” and “number.” Again, you would never write “a large amount of people attended the concert.” These music lovers can be counted, so write “a large number of people attended the concert.” Likewise, you would never write “I have a greater number of milk now,” but would of course write “I have a greater amount of milk now.” Use “number” when the items are quantifiable and reserve “amount” for materials not divisible into discrete items.

Now I don't know whether to solve a math problem, listen to a song, or read a book!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Write what you know: ten story idea starters

In high school, creative writing assignments (short stories and one-act plays, in my case) tend to generate out-of-this-world story ideas. Settings that students choose might range from deepest outer space to the inner workings of the Kremlin in the old Soviet Union. Invariably, students have little or no firsthand knowledge of these places, and they would be much better served to write about the world they know. With that in mind, I wrote the following ten story starters that live a little closer to home.

1. Students are standing in the serving line in the cafeteria, or sitting at a cafeteria table. Perhaps they start out by complaining about the food. Then a more important issue arises -- perhaps a dispute between two students, or a boyfriend-girlfriend issue. Perhaps a food-fight erupts (maybe this tale is a farce)? The cafeteria aides could be characters too.
2. Students are riding on a bus. Are there differences among the students based on where they sit on the bus (social hierarchy)? Perhaps there is a traffic accident, or perhaps the students see something incredible or remarkable going on outside the bus? How do they react?

3. Students in a writing group are trying to brainstorm ideas. This could be a story about the story your group is trying to write right now. Do they disagree? What conclusions do they reach? This could be a real mind-blower (a story within a story)!
4. A boyfriend-girlfriend emotional conflict could be central to your tale. The other friends could be characters as well. Rumors and arguments circulate and could be part of the dramatic action.

5. Students are in the detention room / in-school suspension room. Perhaps something happens that causes a conflict between two students, or between a student and the detention supervisor. Perhaps two characters find they have something in common or come to a new understanding of, and respect for, each other. (Yes, I know this idea is very derivative of the film The Breakfast Club…)
6. Fans are in the stands at a high school sporting event. Does something exciting happen during the game? How do the fans react to this event? Confine your story to the bleachers.
7. Students are in a classroom, and the teacher leaves the room and never comes back during the course of the story. What do the students do? What happens?
8. A fire drill occurs. Perhaps it leads to a mysterious discovery of something or someone outside the school. What happens next?
9. What happens during a dodge ball game (or pick any other sport of your choice)? Do two students in the dodge-ball game have a “history” and are in conflict? How does that play out during the game?
10. Thanksgiving dinner brings out issues and conflicts and relationships in a family. How are these situations resolved?

Or simply think of the myriad other situations students encounter on a daily basis: the SAT tests, going to the school nurse, a class in the art room, a school concert, etc., etc. In college, it might be the student union, a school club, the dorm, etc., etc. The possibilities are (literally) endless.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Your poetic license has been revoked!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain
photo (with text added by the author).

For a reason I cannot fathom, some high school students seem to have the hardest time distinguishing between the terms fiction and nonfiction. Not so much in practice. They can often identify whether a book is “true” or not. But the labels “fiction” and “nonfiction” seem to baffle some of them. For example, they will often describe any book as a novel (when a novel, of course, is fictional by definition).

As a new college writer, remember this: You are working solidly in the realm of nonfiction. Unless you are taking a creative writing class (writing fiction, poetry and/or plays), your “poetic license” has been revoked. The word “license” means that someone has been given permission to do something, whether drive a car, cut hair or practice medicine. My dog-eared copy of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines “poetic license” (under “license”) as: “deviation from fact, form, or rule by an artist or writer for the sake of effect gained.” In this manner, although the playwrights of Inherit the Wind obviously based their play on the real-life Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1920s America, they very specifically pointed out that their play “... does not pretend to be journalism. It is theatre.” Sometimes the lines blur. Frank McCourt’s groundbreaking memoir Angela’s Ashes, although ostensibly nonfiction, abandons quotation marks in dialogue in order to achieve McCourt’s desired effect.

Now facts and truth are two different matters. A great work of fiction (or a classic Greek myth, for that matter) can contain more “human truth” than a fact-based newspaper article or magazine essay. Nonetheless, your college essays need to be grounded in fact. As the late U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously remarked, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Rest assured, in college essay writing, you are seeking the truth. But in doing so, you do not have license to play fast and loose with the facts.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Do you know Bill? William? Willie? Try Shakespeare.

Source: Wikimedia Commons public
domain photo (with text added by
the author).

One perplexing characteristic I see in student writing -- and perhaps it is emblematic of the increasingly relaxed formality of modern life -- is the use of first names to indicate famous people (usually authors) in the papers I grade. Thus, I’ll read a sentence like the following: “Some scholars believe that William wrote Macbeth in 1603 to coincide with the investiture of King James of Scotland.” Wow, my 16-year-old high school student is on a first-name basis with William Shakespeare. Who knew?

This usage of first names is, of course, improper. The right way is to use the full name upon first reference, and then last name only (or pronouns) for subsequent references. Thus: “William Shakespeare … he … Shakespeare … he … he … Shakespeare,” etc. Obviously, in a lengthy essay or a book-length work, the full name will be repeated occasionally.

The only time it’s appropriate to reference first name only would be when describing the author as a child. It would sound too stiff to refer to Shakespeare asleep in his crib or teething. It’s okay to use William or Will (or whatever his parents called him) in that case.

As for me? I’m Mister Dial to my high school students. I tell them that my parents named me “Mister” because they knew I was going to become a teacher…

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Let some air out of those gasbag expressions!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain
photo (with text added by the author).

The sting from some cutting remarks scribbled on your papers by teachers of yore can last a lifetime. For example, I’ll never forget the venomous response my use of the pompous phrase “So I say” (as a lead-in to one of my conclusions) elicited from my high school English teacher. Needless to say, until this very moment, I had never written “So I say” again in my life.

Likewise, I often cross out “I believe” (as well as "My opinion is that...") in student papers. Though “I believe” is certainly less pretentious-sounding than “So I say,” it is nevertheless redundant. If you are writing a paper and asserting your beliefs, then there is seldom any reason to write “I believe” in it. After all, we know it’s what you believe because you’re the one writing it. Just say it!

Now quick, puncture those gasbag expressions and let the wind out before your prose explodes!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

That qualifier is so very really totally NOT necessary!

One type of word that too frequently springs up like a noxious weed in student writing is the qualifier/intensifier. Intensifiers are words like very, really, actually, and truly. Most of the time, they are either: 1.) not needed at all; or 2.) best eliminated by thinking of a better word (adjective, adverb or verb), thus embedding the “very-ness” into the newer, better word.

Let’s take for example the ever (over) popular intensifier “very,” a word I habitually cross out in student writing. Instead of writing that a building is “very tall” -- yawn, how blandly vague! -- why not describe the building as “monolithic” or “gargantuan,” both words that encapsulate the “very-ness” (and some massiveness too) into the “tallness”?

If “she runs really fast,” the intensifier “really” modifies the adverb “fast,” which in turn modifies the verb “runs.” So why not just replace the intensifier AND the adverb with a stronger verb? “She sprints” or “she dashes.”

Here’s another good example. Frequently, where I work, teachers will receive a message that announces, “Fire drills will be conducted today unless it is actively raining.” This message always leaves me scratching my head. How is “actively raining” different from “raining”?... Anytime you can eliminate an unnecessary word, that’s a great and beautiful revision and you should celebrate accordingly!

Perhaps the worst offenders are “truly” and “actually.” If “she is truly going to do it,” then “she is going to do it.” If “he handed me an actual loaf of bread,” then “he handed me a loaf of bread.” Adding “truly” or “actually” doesn’t make an object or action more real than it already is. In recent years, I’ve seen “physically” used too often as well. “The man physically handed me a dollar bill.” Ooookaaayyy… How about, “The man handed me a dollar bill” instead?

So, in sum, you should truly, really and actually stop using these unnecessary qualifiers and intensifiers!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Size matters … when writing description

Source: Wikimedia Commons
 public domain photo

In my high school classroom, we’ve just finished reading the novella “Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin, a fantastic story I had mentioned in an earlier post. One superior characteristic of this story is Martin’s vivid use of description, and one aspect of his descriptions that struck me this year is his use of familiar comparisons to describe size. Yes, size matters.

Rather than describe the dimensions of an object (as in “four feet wide by two feet tall”), which might indeed be appropriate for a mechanical drawing or blueprint, Martin compares the size of unknown, imaginary things to recognizable objects.

“Sandkings” is a science fiction/horror story full of imaginary creatures that grow in size as the story progresses. The “maws” are queen bee-like creatures that control ant-like “mobiles” called sandkings. Both of these fictional creatures grow to match the size of their surrounding environment. Here are some of the descriptions that Martin employs.

Early on, as a salesperson in a “pet” store describes the maw:

“The maw lives in the castle. Maw is my name for her. A pun, if you will; the thing is mother and stomach both. Female, large as your fist, immobile.”

Then, later, when sandkings bearing their maw escape from a larger tank:

“He watched as a column took shape, a living, writhing square of sandkings, bearing something, something slimy and featureless, a piece of raw meat big as a man's head. They began to carry it away from the tank. It pulsed.”

At the beginning of the story, the ant-like sandking mobiles live in a small tank at the “pet” store:

“It still looked like an insect to his eyes. Barely as long as his fingernail, six-limbed, with six tiny eyes set all around its body.”

Later, the sandkings escape from a larger tank in the main character’s house:

“They were larger than he remembered. Some were almost as big as his thumb.”

Later still, an escaped sandking attacks one of the other characters in the story:

“A great white sandking had clamped itself around her wrist. Blood welled through her skinthins where its mandibles had sunk in. It was fully as large as her hand.”

Finally, an escaped sandking menaces the main character:

“Something moved from shadow into light. A pale shape on the seat of his skimmer. It was as long as his forearm. Its mandibles clacked together softly, and it looked up at him from six small eyes set all around its body.”

Fist to head; fingernail to thumb to hand to forearm. With these descriptions, a reader need only consult his or her own body to sense the size of the creatures being described. How much more real and vivid this is than “two inches long,” etc. One way to help readers understand the unfamiliar (as in science fiction) is to relate it to the familiar. Furthermore, the increasing size of the creatures helps to mark the passage of time and to establish the chronological sequence of the story.

As writers of creative nonfiction such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and many others have recognized for decades, the techniques of fiction can inform nonfiction writing too. Writing an essay for sociology or economics class does not restrict you to boring, bland descriptions. Whenever possible, make them vivid and make them real.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Writing dialogue: show, don’t tell

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain
 photo (with text added by the author).

One of the mantras in a creative writing class is “show, don’t tell.” In other words, in a work of fiction, show the characters doing things (performing actions); don’t talk about them doing things. The distinction can be subtle. For example, instead of “the man became frightened of the approaching train,” rather write that “his face turned pale and his eyes grew wide as he saw the train rush toward him.” The reader will “get it” from the details you provide that this dude is scared of the onrushing locomotive.

Another way to “show” characters doing things is through effective use of dialogue. Dialogue can be used in nonfiction as well as in fiction. For example, you may have conducted an interview with a source and want to insert a portion of the interview directly into your essay or research paper. Or you may be reconstructing dialogue from a past event based on recollections of the participants. Also, nonfiction authors sometimes write hypothetical dialogues to set a scene or illustrate a point.

At any rate, several years ago, as part of a lesson on writing dialogue, I took a passage of dialogue from a published story and reworked it so that it was badly written. So that it “tells, not shows” – the opposite of what a good writer strives to do.

Here is my rewritten passage of dialogue, taken from the short story “The Shelter” by Rod Serling:

      Paul came up from the basement and asked his father what else he should bring downstairs. Paul’s father asked his son if he had brought all the canned goods to the basement. Paul said that he brought all the canned goods to the basement that he could find. Paul’s mother, Grace, asked the boy if he had cleared out the fruit cellar. Paul said that he had.

      Paul’s father told his son to get his bag from the bedroom and to bring that down, too. Paul asked about the books and other things. Grace became angry and shouted at her son, telling him to get his father’s bag.

Clearly, this passage as currently written is wretched. It talks about people talking instead of showing them talking (through dialogue).

Here is the (so much better!) original:

Paul came up from the basement.

“What else, pop?”

“All the canned goods down?”

“All that I could find.”

“How about the fruit cellar?” Grace asked him, keeping her voice steady.

“I put all those in too,” Paul responded.

“Get my bag from the bedroom,” Stockton said. “Put that down there, too.”

“What about books and stuff?” Paul said.

When Grace spoke her voice broke and the words came out tight and loud -- louder than her son could ever remember, and different, too.

“Dammit! Your father told you to get his bag--!”

Show, don’t tell.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.