Something to Share for a Writer’s Workshop with my Students

          A writer is drawn to an essay presenting a list of “don’ts” for the fellow pen holder. Ezra Pound’s “A Retrospect” speaks to renovations in poetry-writing. He provides a list of “cautions.” I have seen this type of essay before. In my second semester in college, I read a few George Orwell essays. I give Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946) immense credit for drastically revising my writing style. I include one portion of Orwell’s essay here:

“When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

          Orwell exposed much of the vagueness in my own writing. I had to re-wire the “composing” part of my brain. I realized I must be intentional and active and resolved to be clear in speech.  I realized the goal of “clarity” is much sooner reached when a writer thinks in pictures first, and words second. How often does writing resort to over-used, vague, tired phrases! In my tutoring sessions at the University Writing Center, I often instruct students to eliminate vague, unhelpful expressions and to write in active voice. Often, students are afraid to cut words out, terrified to make sentences short—but this makes for crisp, clear, sharp writing.

          Pound writes before Orwell, yet both aspire to list “cautions” for the fellow writer. I note that both authors lament many of the same troubles in writing, though Orwell speaks to prose and Pound to poetry. Pound urges an “economy of words”: “Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.”  Orwell echoes: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” I had a poetry professor spend a portion of class time discussing Pound’s warning: “Go in fear of abstractions.” Both authors call fellow writers to paint concrete images, and to avoid churning out abstract expressions that give readers no picture that sticks to the insides of their brains.  Yet this is more work, both authors admit. This is what makes a writer’s craft.

          One observation about Pound is that he does not aim to be accessible to all readers. He writes for the expert, for the educated, bilingual reader. He does not make any point to emphasize his goal in writing is clarity.  His purposes and cautions for writers differ, as he addressing the composition of verse. For me, verse is difficult. I feel very safe in prose. I have room to breathe, room to work, room to expand an idea. Prose and poetry rely on different tools, and I’m not sure my hands have grasped the tools of poetry-writing. A section of Pound’s essay uncovers what is often a problem in my poetry, and shows me there is much more about the art I have yet to discover. Pound writes:

 “Don’t make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave…There is…in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ base.”

In poetry, I know I’m guilty of stopping dead-end in lines and beginning again with a heave.

Pound calls attention to the sound quality of poetry—it is a component just as much as the words on the page! English majors know this, that the line breaks are a means to an end. They are what produce (or help to produce) the “rhythm wave.” I would like very much to achieve what Pound calls a “residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer.” How does one become conscious of this in writing? Achieving an “organ base” sounds much more artful and effective than rhyming.

To conclude on a short note, Pound (and Orwell) give advice that, when taken seriously, drastically revives the way a person is used to writing. But I must confess I don’t understand Pound’s poetry. I need an interpreter.