"Quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain"

It's been a while since I've put something up here. Don't think I haven't been working, though. I've been focusing on poetry lately, as well as looking into publishing in literary journals. It could be quite a while before the fruits of those efforts appear, though. For now, here's an essay I wrote for the Truman Writing Center's blog about choosing good verbs. I doubt that you folks need or want advice on the fundamentals of writing, but in this essay we get the chance to destroy a perfectly good poem, as well as explore the ways in which the original poem works.

On Verbs: Sink or Swim—Or Walk?

Trust your verbs. Always—and if you find that you can’t trust them, fire them and get new ones. You can’t have a sentence without a verb. Verbs are not always the showiest part of a sentence, not always the part of your writing that the reader walks away remembering, but they are the hub around which all the other parts of the sentence turn. To make a comparison to music, verbs are like the chords in a song, the essential foundation that gives just the right tension and shading to the ear-catching melody of nouns and adjectives.

The fundamental importance of verb choice is sometimes hard to see clearly unless you compare the disastrous effects of the wrong verb to the strong but flexible structure given by the right verbs. To see some verbs in action, let’s look at a poem by Billy Collins. He’s one of my favorite poets—the clarity and accessibility of his word choice often stands in sharp contrast to the surprising journeys his images take the reader on.

Walking Across the Atlantic

Billy Collins

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach

before stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlantic

thinking about Spain,

checking for whales, waterspouts.

I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.

Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to imagine what

this must look like to the fish below,

the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

(from Sailing Alone Around the Room)

Lovely little poem, don’t you think? So that we can contrast the firm, flexible structure made by good verbs with the chaos, or inflexible, impenetrable wordiness, caused by bad and unhelpful ones, let’s ruin this poem by just changing some of the verbs to similar, but much less effective, ones. With apologies to Collins:

Strolling Across the Atlantic

I stand waiting for the holiday crowd to vacate the beach

before hopping onto the first wave.

Soon I am strolling across the Atlantic

dreaming about Spain,

watching for whales, waterspouts.

I feel the water keeping up my shifting weight.

Tonight I will snooze on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to visualize what

this must look like to the fish below,

the bottoms of my feet showing up suddenly and vanishing.

Well, yuck, right? It’s not meaningless, but it’s not poetry any more. Everything’s either gone flat, or gone silly. See how “stand waiting” adds an unnecessary word and changes the simple, deft stroke of “wait” to a two-word phrase with a clunky –ing ending? See how “strolling,” which might appeal to us at first as a more interesting action than “walking,” just made things far too silly and egotistical, in contrast to the determined but everyday tone that the original poem had with “walking”? See how “watching” in the second stanza gave the narrator an over-anxious Captain Ahab attitude, in addition to adding a third word beginning with ‘w’ to that line, overwhelming the subtle, wispy alliteration Collins intended with “whales, waterspouts”? See how “to visualize” in the third stanza is so much more wordy and businesslike and less dreamy than “to imagine”?

I could have changed the verbs much more subtly and still spoiled the poem. On the other hand, it could have been worse: I didn’t throw in any nasty passive-voice constructions like “I felt my weight as it was held by the water” that invert the usual clearer order of doer of the action followed by receiver of the action: “I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.” Picking ineffective verbs—too wordy or too extreme—can keep your writing tied to the ground. Or, to stay in the world of this poem, the surface tension created by the verbs that keeps you on top of the water collapses, and you sink into the waves like the rest of humanity, splashing about in a sea of unhelpful language.

Our choices with verbs are more limited than other word choices in English. When choosing a noun or an adjective, we often have dozens of alluring options. But finding the right verb for a situation has a pleasure all its own. While they are sometimes less flashy than the adjectives or the nouns—I’m more likely to remember the “whales” and “waterspouts” than that the narrator was “checking” for them—they set the tone in a way that nouns and adjectives simply cannot. “Checking” is the same thing we do when crossing the street—it’s casual, almost thoughtless. In our mind’s eye, we see the narrator turning his head every now and then to look right and left for a whale’s back or a spout of water, as if for an oncoming car at a crosswalk—just in case. We get the sense that the narrator has done this before. He has walked across the Atlantic so many times that it’s as habitual as crossing a street with light traffic. He has dealt with the fantastic so many times that to him, it’s just an everyday occurrence. This is the essential tension of the poem—the contrast between the supernatural journey taken and the simple, confident word choice of the narrator. It allows this poem to retain its mystery and offer up new pleasures even after many explorations. Verbs can take you across the Atlantic—as long as they’re the right ones.

Tuesday

has a perfection that haunts me,

like the oracular whine in the cabin of an airliner

sailing over Ohio.

Something transient, the lack of judgment

gifted to time neither end

nor beginning, nor yet even middle:

some minor point in the development,

often missed by fast readers, where

the characters are quietly putting on

their humanity like early spring jackets:

a favorite word, a particular thoughtful expression

that comes over one’s face

when listening to music

or writing out French homework,

trouble falling asleep, trouble waking,

an inclination towards cloud architecture,

a mild hatred of cats, a violent affection

for a certain sitcom.

The events of Wednesday will swallow these things.

On that absurd and turbulent day,

someone new will hate us,

we’ll make Grandma angry for the first time

in twenty years,

we’ll be falling in love, we’ll get chased

by a nasty neighbor’s poodle,

we’ll save someone’s life,

we’ll run over a pregnant opossum

and feel evil for days.

But for now,

the sky as yet dim and bland,

the waking dog

raising its nose to the fading moon

and the Pop-Tarts hot in our hands,

let us drink up the perfection of Tuesday.

The Know-Nothing Consumer

One day I was having lunch at my usual dining hall at Truman. Whipping a glass for milk out of the glass-tray (with a small, habitual, careless flourish that is sure to destroy a glass or glasses someday) I approached the milk dispenser. There are little labels for “Skim,” “Chocolate,” and “2%,” and also little labels that say “Full” and “Empty.” To my satisfaction, I noted that the 2%, my milk product of choice, was labeled “Full.” I confidently pushed up the lever, but found that only a dribble of milk descended from the spout. “What the devil are they about, labeling this ‘Full’?” I demanded (silently. Suspecting dining hall workers of malice is unfortunately an occasional pastime of Truman students.) “It is clearly not full, not by any measure.” I began to walk away, but then some neurons in my brain made a sudden and astounding connection: the “Full” and “Empty” labels were two-sided—they say “Full” on one side and “Empty” on the other. And yet the insight went even deeper: I realized that it is not the cafeteria workers but the students who are expected to flip the labels when a milk dispenser runs out, because, of course, they are the only ones who would know that.

This experience, in which I was a necessary (and defective) component of an economic activity, ended up being quite eye-opening. I began thinking about other things I did not understand. I could think of quite a few. You see, like most people my age, I live in an economy in which I as a consumer am not expected to know anything. I don’t need to know how to fix a car because we belong to AAA. The auto shop people can decode those mysterious orange lighted symbols mean on my dashboard. (Is that really what an engine looks like?) I don’t have to count out bills for most transactions because I use a check card. Think about that one for a moment: I don’t have to count. I don’t have to know the roads of St. Louis, Kirksville, or any other city, because I can look on Google Maps or borrow a GPS from my parents. The development of my cooking skills has been ponderous at best, due to fast food, freezer food and college dining halls. I don’t have to know how to fix my computer—either the ITS department or my dad can figure it out. And I didn’t have to pay attention to the labels on the milk dispenser—until at last they betrayed me. The architecture of our economy is designed to coddle young consummate morons such as myself, whose ignorant money leakages are enormously profitable.

Our parents had to know less than their parents, and we know essentially nothing. Examples of the helplessness of our generation in basic life activities abound. Tonight, while studying in a dorm, I printed off a guide for my genetics lab tomorrow morning. I galloped down the stairs to the lobby printer, confident that I would find the guide waiting for me there. It was not. The desk worker suggested to check if I had printed to the right printer. “Have I really done that again?” I asked myself. “Surely I checked before I impulsively clicked print.” I had not. In fact, when I brought up the print screen again, the selected printer was located in the library, a 5-minute walk away.

I set out for the library. When I got there, I found the first-floor printer belching out a six-page document every 15 seconds. All print jobs have a cover sheet with our serial username. The cover sheets showed that these were all coming from the same person. One of my friends was stacking the documents on the printer, anxiously waiting for her own papers to show up. Then I realized that I had not checked which library printer I had printed to, and that it was probably the second floor printer. I went upstairs and found my papers. Delighted, I returned to the first floor. The printer was still vomiting papers as if it had a sort of pulpy stomach flu. There were now a few nervous people standing around the printer. I offered to go explain what was happening to the students in the ITS office upstairs, one of those islands of experts to which we are continually having to hop so we can have our problems solved. But suddenly the printer started printing out other people’s papers. My friend left without ever getting her paper.

I’m willing to bet that the student who printed out a septillion of copies thought that he or she was only printing one. But the darn thing wasn’t coming out at the dorm lobby printer in front of which he or she was standing, so the ‘Print’ button got irritably clicked a few more times. And then a few more times.

It all just makes me wonder: first it was misunderstanding the milk system in the servery. But what will it be next time? I operate all sorts of complex and even dangerous machinery—a coffee maker, a car, a razor, a computer. What if next time I can’t just cross the room to the other milk dispenser? What if next time I’m faced with the certain disaster of having to rely on my own abilities? But that, of course, will never happen.

A Day of Fog

This morning, banks of fog descended on Adair County. Many students found the fog creepy, suggestive of stranglers and dementors. I thought it looked kind of cool.

Thousand Hills State Park looked like it was in another country today.

A more northern, bracingly cold country with heather and fens and firths.

I was keeping an eye out for Nessie. No luck today, though.

The sun started to break through as the day went on, but the light was still strange, making the lake look like the coast of the North Sea.

And then, as if that wasn't enough of a treat, even heavier banks of fog rolled in tonight. My camera was not really up to the task.

The Quad, and some Christmas lights. That figure to the right is a statue of Baldwin, Truman's first president. Okay, so maybe the fog is a little creepy after all.

Escaping the Cycle of Political Apathy

The next time I hear someone my age complain that our votes are meaningless and that we can't affect the course of politics, I'll have a convincing counterexample.

A junior and a senior from Truman (one of whom is the student association president) co-founded Missourians for Equality, an organization that aims to fight for gay civil rights, according to the Truman Index. The students have recently filed a petition for an amendment to the Missouri constitution to prohibit discrimination against sexual minorities on an equal plane with other protected classes. If Missourians for Equality gathers 150,000 signatures for its petition by May 2014, then the amendment will appear on the ballot that November.

Read the full story by the Index here.

I'm truly impressed by what these students are doing. People my age have the chance to influence Missouri civil rights policy in a potentially historic way. I'm convinced that our generation's political apathy is not nearly as justified as we imagine. Believing that we can't affect the course of events is a self-fulfilling prophecy; these Truman students decided to ignore such thoughts and go ahead and change things.

Photo Essay: Two Trips in the Rural Edges of Missouri

Recently I went on two trips that skirted the extreme edges of human habitation in Missouri: areas where people live just this side of wilderness, with strange, transitional features. (Click photos to enlarge.)

Pasture-Hills South of Columbia

First, I hiked through hilly country south of Columbia with my friend Andrew. We weren't actually sure where the heck we were. We were looking for a decent trail to hike while driving along a highway that skirted the edge of a section of Mark Twain National Forest. Our search was made more difficult because the only sign with a map that we found had been shot through several times with a firearm, parallel to the plane of the paper, obliterating most of the map. The trail we eventually found was apparently just outside of Boone County, for after crossing this bridge (and there was some doubt as to whether it would actually support the weight of the Highlander I was driving) we were informed that Boone County was no longer responsible for the maintenance of the roads. Not that the roads encountered previously seemed much maintained, at all.

A heroic old bridge, to be sure; yet a daunting prospect to cross in a medium-sized SUV.

The creek was of a nice size--would have been nice for a canoe trip, had it not been so brutally cold.

Just over the bridge was a trail-head into the woods, which we decided to take, having no particular plan for where we were going.

This helpful sign explained who has the right-of-way on narrow wooden footbridges. Apparently horses reign supreme on this trail.

We found a very old overturned car a little off the trail. Any guesses as to the make/model?

 Very suddenly, the trail opened up onto wide grassy fields on the ridges of hills. For some reason, the view made me think of Poland, or at least the things I associate with Poland, seeing as I've never been there.

There were faint trails, perhaps made by horses, through these fields. And they seemed to be used for pasture-land, as evidenced by the fresh and abundant cow pies.

Hollows packed tight with pine trees separated the grassy ridges from one another. The thick woods, as well as the ill-defined trails on the fields, caused us to get moderately lost a number of times. Eventually we found our way back to where we started.

On another trail earlier that day we found this pair of cartoonishly large holes in a living tree.

The Western Pale of Kirksville

A few days later, I took my bike out to the western outskirts of Kirksville, towards the University Farm. I would like to take this opportunity to correct the mistaken and shockingly prevalent belief held by people unfamiliar with Truman that there are cornfields on the main block of campus, which must be crossed by every Truman student on their way to class. There is indeed a farm operated by the university a mile from campus, entirely out of sight of the main campus, and agricultural science classes sometimes meet there. But there are no crops grown next to the library, forsooth and anon.

Let's start the trip on campus:

The Sunken Garden losing its leaves. Thoroughly non-agricultural green space, such as can be seen on many modern college campuses.

A brick path on campus.

 Alright, westward we ride, under cloudy, dispersed daylight. Passing by several blocks of a suburban landscape such as you might find in St. Louis county (and indeed more than a few expatriates of St. Louis live in the area) we come up rather suddenly to the beginning of the transition to rural land. 

 A new subdivision adjacent to active fields, and then more houses west of the field. This pattern repeats a couple times until we reach the Boundary Road. 

This house is one of the smallest free-standing dwellings that I've ever seen in this country. Not sure if it's currently occupied.

Houses and fields near the Boundary Road, to the west of town.

Finally we cross the Boundary Road and go up the long drive to the University Farm.

My dependable Schwinn mountain bike, which has served as my steed on many adventures and misadventures, on the gravel drive up to the University Farm. In the distance, the farm's vineyard and some of its fields.

There are several academic buildings and structures at the farm. One is the university observatory, which includes this large telescope. In the picture it's closed, but on Stargazer's Club open house nights it's crammed out the door with people and lit inside with red light (which is less harmful to night vision than white or yellow light.)

Some astronomic equipment whose function I do not know.

What looks to be a vegetable garden. In the background, the windmill.

A strange autumnal sight: dead sunflower stalks taller than me, and a cleared field.

 A harvested field, covered with windfall tomatoes that were left behind. The sight of this field recalled something we learned in high school theology--that poor people known as "gleaners" would pick up unwanted crops, and that their right to do so was stated in Hebrew law.

An Angus cow, a surprisingly large animal, gives me a wary look.

I had just watched Fiddler on the Roof, so this path struck me as looking like a road on which one might find Tevye tugging his cart of milk and rambling heavenwards: "On the other hand... on the other hand..."

Satanic Verses, Vampiric Ideas

A reminder in today’s New York Times about the challenges posed by freedom of speech:

I was surprised to read in Bill Keller’s column this morning that the author Salman Rushdie chose to live in America over other democratic countries because he “reveres … the freedom, not so protected in other Western democracies, to say hateful, racist, blasphemous things.”

He reveres the freedom to say hateful and racist things? “Blasphemous” makes sense, but at first the other two adjectives confused me. I understood the protection of bigoted speech to be an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of speech being free. But Rushdie’s well-worded explanation settled some questions about freedom of speech that I’ve had for a while:

“Terrible ideas, reprehensible ideas, do not disappear if you ban them. They acquire a kind of glamour of taboo. In the harsh light of day, they are out there and, like vampires, they die in the sunlight.”

The American experiment, often not engaged in wholeheartedly, includes a fair amount of Thoreau-style self-government: rather than policing speech, the U.S. system expects an active, conscientious public to decry bad ideas and words. The ideal is a meritocracy of words, of orators. If evil words persist in floating to the top of the public consciousness, seeming to work some mysterious power over people, the only failure is on the part of the citizenry.