Be Your Own Editor

Contributed by Andrea Di Salvo

Most prose writers are not great poets, and most poets are not great prose writers. Oh, there are exceptions, like Shakespeare, but they’re usually the literary exceptions that prove the rule. However, that doesn’t mean there should be no crossover between the styles. If you’re a prose writer, the fact that your poetry will never equal Keats shouldn’t keep you from trying!

The most basic reason for a prose writer to pursue poetry—both reading and writing—is because it is enjoyable. However, there’s more to it than that. Poetry also offers a different view of the world, a certain slant of sunlight and shadow that only poetry can provide. When you look through the eyes of a poet, you see things differently. When you apply that special vision to your prose, you get spectacular results.

To be clear, I’m not referring to what some call “poetic rambling”—just the opposite. I’m talking about the poet’s ability to seize an emotion, event, or image and narrow it to only a few words… or cast it in moonlight instead of sunlight… or squeeze it into iambic pentameter without making it seem squeezed. It’s that kind of ability that can benefit your prose.

For instance, let’s consider how the modern poet Lorraine R. Sautner approaches the “boring” profession of accounting in this excerpt from her poem “The Alchemist.”

If accountancy were a dark art,
he’d be a High Priest,
cloaked in deductible
interest income, conjuring
diabolical formulas of amortization,
and whispering incantations

in praise of the unholy
power of compound
interest…
…
…In a state of near exhaustion
and with trembling digits, he
raises to the heavens
his financial masterpiece,
lit from within by a supernatural
actuarial luminescence.
And in a final gesture of renunciation,
gently surrenders it to his Outbox.

…the expense reports are now complete.

While it’s true you would never write prose exactly like that, think how much stronger your descriptive writing would be if you used that kind of imagery in everything you wrote (well, maybe not in an expense report, but you get the idea!).

Here’s another example, on a darker note—Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet V”:

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

Her use of the everyday as a setting for the tragic news highlights the grief—backlighting it, so to speak. More than that, she seems to effortlessly portray a grief too sacred to be shared with strangers on a subway… a grief so profound it has to be held in for a more private moment. Above all, she does it using only 118 words, and in a way more compelling than if she’d used the hackneyed cliché, “A grief too deep for words.”

From these two examples alone, you can see how the poetic perspective applies not only to poetry, but also to compelling prose. Imagine paragraphs or scenes written with the same mind-set, the same attention to every word, the same sensory-based emotion. Better yet, try it out! Take one of these poems, or another you like, and write a piece of prose—fact or fiction—using the skills of the poet. It may take some practice. Done correctly, though, it will lift your prose to a whole new altitude.

Andrea’s writing background includes features, editorials, reviews, profiles, poetry and fiction. She was the winner of the MOTA short story contest in 2002 and received honorable mentions for fiction from Writer’s Journal magazine in 2002 and 2004. Check out her blog at http://creativewithwriting.blogspot.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Writing/Editing Tips: The Big Picture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.