Plodding poetry and musical prose
 

Having often heard silly questions and silly advice presented with the gravitas of a village guru, I would like to offer a gentle reminder that writing is more than the sum of its parts.

A "go-to form" useful as a security blanket was a new illumination, but how often have we not heard such trite certainties as: "you have already said sad, so cut unhappy and tears'," or 'don't tell us that the sky is blue, we know that', or 'I hate colons and semicolons', or 'don't tell what it isn't; tell what it is," ad infinitum, all culled haphazardly from some two-bit list on How-To-Write or some fuzzy inner certainty.

A poem is more than a rhyme scheme. Beautiful prose can often demonstrate the essence of prosody better than many plodding poems.

To return a moment to William H. Gass, from the essay "The Music of Prose." (And note the difference between "for ever" and "forever".)
I would be happy to see other examples of prose that is musical or deliberately cacophonic or otherwise demonstrative of excellent writing.

i love this paragraph
 

No one would accuse Jack Vance of high art, but this paragraph from "Eyes of the Overworld" describing his greatest and most characteristic character, the amoral trickster Cugel, set me to reading at age 14 everything he's ever written. Like HP Lovecraft's, his diction and how it's deployed can be copied, but usually only poorly. For example, Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist" sounded to me like a bad Vance pastiche, although the tribute collection, "Songs of the Dying Earth," edited by George RR Martin, really nails the style (and his characters' constant dissembling and learned mistrust, which it often reflects) throughout. Vance's greatest gift was to use familiar words, such as "lozenges," in unexpected and, consequently, fantastical ways.

"Cugel was a man of many capabilities, with a disposition at once flexible and pertinacious. He was long of leg, deft of hand, light of finger, soft of tongue. His hair was the blackest of black fur, growing low down his forehead, coving sharply back above his eyebrows. His darting eye, long inquisitive nose and droll mouth gave his somewhat lean and bony face an expression of vivacity, candor, and affability. He had known many vicissitudes, gaining therefrom a suppleness, a fine discretion, a mastery of both bravado and stealth. Coming into the possession of an ancient lead coffin—after discarding the contents—he had formed a number of leaden lozenges."

If it's musical/poetic prose you want, read Ann Michaels' "Fugitive Pieces", and entire novel of the most musical reading you just can't even begin to imagine. I haven't come across too many books that can match that feat.

I'll remember the name, Seree. Could you post a couple of sentences or a paragraph? Pls.

""Vraiment? And maybe you visited Leningrad merely to chat with a lady in pink under the lilacs? Because, you know, you and your friends are phenomenally naive. The reason Mister (it rhymed with 'Easter' in his foul serpent-mouth) Vetrov was permitted to leave a certain labor camp in Vadim--odd coincidence--so he might fetch his wife, is that he has been cured now of his mystical mania--cured by such nutcrackers, such shrinkers as are absolutely unknown in the philosophy of your Western sharlatany. Oh yes, precious (dragotsennyy) Vadim Vadimovich--" The swing I dealt old Oleg with the back of my left fist was of quite presentable power, especially if we remember--and I remembered it as I swung--that our combined ages made 140. There ensued a pause while I struggled back to my feet (unaccustomed momentum had somehow caused me to fall from my seat). "Nu, dali v mordu. Nu, tak chtozh?" he muttered (Well, you've given me one in the mug. Well, what does it matter?). Blood blotched the handkerchief he applied to his fat muzhikian nose. "Nu, dali," he repeated and presently wandered away. I looked at my knuckles. They were red but intact. I listened to my wristwatch. It ticked like mad."

E. Annie Proulx's prose is quite musical. She tends to pile on the modifiers, but somehow, one doesn't seem to mind in way it all seems to meld together. A good example is this short story at The Atlantic.

...Alex

There's an odd implication in that dreaded poetry workshop critique that states "your poem is simply prose broken into lines" or something to that effect.

So many great writers out there (some poets even) where does one start? In answer to your question Janice, though, two people from Nebraska sprang to mind: Loren Eiseley, Wright Morris.

Ah, but they never write, "In that dreaded poetry workshop critique 'your poem is simply beautiful prose broken into lines'." :)

Examples, Dean? A sentence or two, or a paragraph?

pages and pages of it are readable on amazon, J.
http://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Piece...der_0679776591
Some sections are more 'regular' prosey, but the overall impression is of reading a book of poetic prose. It's not suprising: the author also had two books of poetry published before the novel.

Only a couple minutes here Janice, so I won't type any Morris or Eiseley, but here is a link to an essay by Lia Purpura, titled Being of Two Minds (someone else I thought of immediately when I read your question).

http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays/print/...4-purpura.html

I'm certainly not about to look any gift horses in the mouth and all contributions are welcome.

But especially I am looking forward to finding some "high art", an isolated sentence or two that one can savor, even torn from its context, and perhaps a brief explication telling why it works so well for the you who suggested it.

Of course, it isn't an order (god forbid), just a shivering little wish sent on a cold and rainy day from the north where winter will soon have us physically and mentally snowed-in again.

PS. And perhaps a tag telling who wrote and/or translated it? I think I recognize Nabokov above; the text is indeed well-writ and holds one's interest--but musical?

Consider the poetry in John Steinbeck's opening para of "The Grapes of Wrath", more poetry than we find in a lot of poems--the rhythm, the repetition, the parallels, imagery, metaphor (green bayonets), personification (rains came gently, protect themselves), the sensory quality.

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

Cross posted with Dean.

Here is the opening of Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country:

::Slightly off-topic:: & for all of you with a keen or even passing interest in good prose writing, this year's flash fiction workshop is coming soon to the neighborhood's Fiction Forum!

...Alex

The opening of The Sound and the Fury, part 3:

Paton should have got the Nobel, like Steinbeck and Faulkner did.

Thanks for all of these suggestions. Truly there is much poetry lurking in prose that comes from a master's hand.

PS. Looking forward to the fiction bash, Alex!

The opening paragraphs of Bleak House are gorgeous in their insistent rhythms. The second paragraph, especially, is almost hypnotic.

Nausheen, yes, yes, Dickens. I almost know by heart the opening to A Tale of Two Cities.

I can think of many Southern US writers who write like poets; for instance Carson McCullers (beginning of The Ballad of the Sad Café)

The town itself is dreary; not much is there except the cotton mill, the two-room houses where the workers live, a few peach trees, a church with two colored window, and a miserable main street only a hundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the nearby farms come in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world. The nearest train stop is Society City, and the Greyhound and White Bus Lines use the Forks Falls Road which is three miles away. The winters here are short and raw, the summers white with glare and fiery hot.

If you walk along the main street on an august afternoon there is nothing whatsoever to do. The largest building, in the very center of the town, id boarded up completely and leans so far to the right that it seems bound to collapse at any minute. The house is very old. There is about it a curious, cracked look that is very puzzling until you suddenly realize that at one time, and long ago, the right side of the front porch had been painted, and part of the wall—but the painting was left unfinished and one portion of the house is darker and dingier than the other. The building looks completely deserted. Nevertheless, on the second floor there is one window which is not boarded; sometimes in the late afternoon when the heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and a face will look down on the town. It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams—sexless and white, with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief. The face lingers at the window for an hour or so, then the shutters are closed once more, and as likely as not there will not be another soul to be seen along the main street. These August afternoons—when your shift is finished there is absolutely nothing to do; you might as well walk down to the Forks Falls Road and listen to the chain gang.

Doesn't that melody just roll off the tongue: a miserable main street, a day of talk and trade, a curious, cracked look.

One can swoon when reading:

It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams—sexless and white, with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief.

On http://may-on-the-short-story.blogsp...oetry-and.html there are claims made for the power of sound in short stories.

In "next word, better word" by Stephen Dobyns, the first sentence of Henry James' "The Middle Years" is given a few pages of attention, but not especially for its musicality.

Fish's "How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One" sparked discussions. Of "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (Fitzgerald), someone wrote - I love how it's so tantalizingly close to iambic pentameter - 5 iambs followed by 4 and 1/2.The cadence carries the reader forward in the first phrase with four staccato syllables. The choppiness of the second phrase brings the current's restraint to life, interrupting the flow of the sentence. The final phrase glides easily, but the missing twentieth syllable leaves the reader anticipating more. One can imagine the novel's last sentence repeating endlessly, beginning again where it left off. And of course that's the point. The art of the sentence is in its structure as much as its words.

You don't want too much poetry in novels in my opinion. You can't digest 600 pages of it. Dickens is sparing of the kind of thing he kicks off with in Bleak House. But in short stories...

Shena Mackay writes novels but I can't warm to them. But short stories. Try 'Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags'. What a title! This is the opening of 'Electric Blue Damsels'. The whole book is a masterpiece. I met her once. Very straightforward and unpoetic, thank God.

You see them in the Underground with their schoolbooks and across the counters of shops and waiting of tables in restaurants, slinging burgers and pushing brooms, girls and boys in whom an exotic cocktail of genes has been shaken into a startling and ephemeral beauty: birds of paradise nesting in garbage, or captive tropical fish shimmering in the gloomy backrooms of dank petshops.


And later in the same story:

His brain turned to coral: emperor and clown, harlequins, rainbows, unicorns, angels and devils, queens, jewels, damsels, glowlights, butterflies, cardinals, swordfish, surgeons, anemones, starfish, sea-horses, dancing shrimps, golden rams and silver sharks, flying foxes, albino tigers, lyretails, parrots and corals; freshwater and marine tropicals from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific swam through its branches. He took out a stack of library books.

She's terrific with lists. Why she is not a Dame of the British Empire or whatever it is these days (usually awarded to sportswomen) I cannot imagine.

This, from "Beautiful Losers" by Leonard Cohen. As I was reading the novel many years ago, I was blown away by that passage and went over and over it, almost to the point of memorization.

I had the pleasure of sitting through a poetry reading by Ann Michaels once. She was inspirational.

John

I also enjoy Cormac McCarthy's prose and the early part of "The Crossing" has some of his best passages. Here are some quotes from that book.

John

Janice,

You may be interested to know there's a similar thread going on right now on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/c...have_read_and/

Most of these particular redditors aren't writers, they're book lovers. Their choices are surprisingly diverse. And before the haughty high-brows hereabout scoff at their selections, it might be best to remember: these are our readers. It's worth a look.

Thanks,

Bill

Haughty highbrows? Here? :o

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith—the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."


The beginning of Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness.

"I used to think," Nora said, "that people just went to sleep, or if they did not go to sleep that they were themselves, but now—" she lit a cigarette and her hands trembled—"now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep."

"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "Let a man lay himself down in the Great Bed and his 'identity' is no longer his own, his 'trust' is not with him, and his 'willingness' is turned over and is of another permission. His distress is wild and anonymous. He sleeps in a Town of Darkness, member of a secret brotherhood. He neither knows himself nor his outriders; he beserks a fearful dimension and dismounts, miraculously, in bed!

"His heart is tumbling in his chest, a dark place! Though some go into the night as a spoon breaks easy water, others go head foremost against a new connivance; their horns make a dry crying, like the wings of the locust, late come to their shedding.

"Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries—in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then; with the pheasants' necks and the goslings' beaks dangling against the hocks of the gallants, and not a pavement in the place, and everything gutters for miles and miles, and a stench to it that plucked you by the nostrils and you were twenty leagues out! The criers telling the price of wine to such effect that the dawn saw good clerks full of piss and vinegar, and blood letting in side streets where some wild princess in a night shift of velvet howled under a leech; not to mention the palaces of Nymphenburg echoing back to Vienna with the night trip of late kings letting water into plush cans and fine woodwork!

"No," he said, looking at her sharply, "I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on a long time!"

She said, "I've never known it before— I thought I did, but it was not knowing at all."

"Exactly," said the doctor. "You thought you knew, and you hadn't even shuffled the cards—now the nights of one period are not the nights of another. Neither are the nights of one city the nights of another....."

Djuna Barnes (Nightwood)

What came immediately to my mind on seeing this thread is perhaps too well known:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The last sentence of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

I checked out the reddit.com thread and the entire passage is there.

http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/c...have_read_and/

Fitzgerald no doubt worked hard on this sentence. It has many poetic elements: imagery, alliteration, evocative suggestion of several things, rhythm, concision, etc. For me it is memorable and I find myself silently saying "boats against the current" at various junctures in my day-to-day life.

Fitzgerald's own poetry is generally considered mediocre. But his prose is very often highly poetic and evocative just as language.

There's also Joseph Conrad, near the end of a passage in "Landfalls and Departures" in The Mirror of the Sea:

"Was he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his last Departure?

It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of supreme and final attention"

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1587/3/

A wonderful metaphor IMO.

--Woody

Bits and pieces from novel full of bits and pieces:

"It was a dam' fine day: and the atmosphere, warm champagne sun, oh, glory!

The earth was blotto with the growth of willow, peach, mango-blossom, and flower. Every ugly thing, and smell, was in incognito, as fragrance and freshness.

Being prone, this typical sprint-time dash and vivacity, played an exulting phantasmagoria note on the inner-man. Medically speaking, the happy circumstances vibrated my ductless glands, and fused into me a wibble-wobble Whoa, Jamieson! fillip-and-flair to live, live!"

...

"The yonder hill-peaks of the Himalaya were tranquil.

The pines and poplars were still: their scent, too, asleep.

Came wafting from afar, the hushed murmur of a brook.

Above, a star was shining: its asterisk lustre excelling the Koh-i-noor's: by the grace of Allah, surpassing in vividity the stone, which, the Occidental mortal, on mijn beste Hoogeachte Herr Jacobus Jonker, once un-earthed."

...

"In my copper begging-bowl, there is a steely blade of curved light, an illumed scimitar, silver, brilliantly glossed, and it is reflecting the scene.

The scene in the miniature is mostly grey and green, and there is still some color in the shadows.

I look at it: fascinated, lulled...

Then, I see the slate-colored hedges on the bank of the river. They are calm, one with the mass of the surrounding shapes and forms.

Silhouetted against the star-lit sky, the forest is still, blended into the yonder sable hills.

Not a thing separated from another.

Everything is in a universal embrace: truly. a slumber of love!"

- G. V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr

Ah Orwn. I thought I was the only one who had read this masterpiece. It reminds me, I don't quite know why, of 'At Swim-two-birds' by the man who is sometimes Flann O'Brien. I suppose Joyce is the greater writer, but I never reread Joyce and O'Brien aka Myles na Gopaleen sits dog-eared on my bedroom shelf.

So does Desani. I suppose Sterne is their distant ancestor.

Clearly I should reread many of these books.

Not to disagree with anything here, but it's been thought-provoking to read this thread in the same week as the rules of writing attributed to the late Elmore Leonard, who is also supposed to have said, "If it sounds like writing, rewrite it."

I am sorry to see that Elmore Leonard died yesterday. http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ars-publishing

But regarding his writing rules and how they relate to beautiful prose, one should remember that he was a crime novelist. That's a whole 'nother ball game.

Still, there is no reason to view a more lean and muscular prose as any less beautiful.

Take the last line of Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, for instance:

"He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest."

And this gem (from the same book):

"But you have no house and no courtyard to your no-house, he thought. You have no family but a brother who goes to battle tomorrow and you own nothing but the wind and the sun and an empty belly. The wind is small, he thought, and there is no sun. You have four grenades in your pocket but they are only good to throw away. You have a carbine on your back but it is only good to give away bullets. You have a message to give away. And you're full of crap that you can give to the earth, he grinned in the dark. You can anoint it also with urine. Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man, he told himself and grinned again."

Nemo

Hardly obscure, but prose hardly gets better than Lincoln:

I agree, Nemo. That is why I captioned this thread "musical", not "beautiful". Beautiful is, as we all know, in the eye of the beholder.

Hemingway is amazingly musical (lyrical, poetic) in much of his work. For Whom the Bell Tolls is an excellent example. I can't at the moment lay my hands on my copy (chaos in my bookshelves) but just consider the stunning passage when Robert (?) is having sex with Maria and asks (with Spanish tu we assume) "Did thee feel the earth move?" Though it has been ripped out and made into a cultural joke, the paragraph(s) where it appears is lovely writing.

I also concur heartily with Roger about the Gettysburg Address, though it isn't fiction (and I didn't make that clear) it is most certainly musical prose. And hey, Ma, no speechwriter!

The thing about Hemingway is that he could do more than one thing. He could do hardboiled (no poetry in The Killers) and he could wax lyrical.

There has been some really excellent input to this thread. Thanks to all.

Lear, Macbeth, Iago
 

Open Moby-Dick randomly and listen to Elizabethan music, especially Shakespeare's.

I'd like to mention Lewis Grassic Gibbon's 1930s trilogy, A Scots Quair, here. There is an extraordinary rhythmical, musical and poetical feel to the language in the first part, "Sunset Song", which is an elegy for pastoral life and man as natural beast, while in the last part, "Grey Granite", which is a critique of modern city life, the language is dead, wooden and hollow. A remarkable work. And not particularly difficult either.

Duncan

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters."

A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean.

Sonics and image and pacing combine to make this an exquisite short poem, for me. The only thing that makes it not a poem is the absence of line breaks.

p.s. Roger, I know that by heart. Even years ago, deep in Australia, I knew it. I used to teach it to my students as an example of beautiful writing. The music of the rhetoric makes it universal.

"But you believe in God," said Alyosha Sergei.

"I believe in this table," she said.

"A vulgar yellow thing that we have because we have nothing else."

"But convincing," she said. "It has such touching legs."

And because she knew, she smiled.

"Ludmilla," he said, leaning forward, "what a beautiful, luminous thing is faith.

He held his head to prevent it bouncing.

"Do you also believe in the saints?" asked Alyosha Sergei.

"I believe in a pail of milk," said Theodora, "with the blue shadow round the rim."

"And the cow's breath still in it?"

"And the cow's breath still in it."


(Patrick White, The Aunt's Story)

Oh my god! I wrote my honours year major essay on The Aunt's Story! It's actually my favourite Patrick White.

'And the cow's breath still in it'. Oh, yes...

"Oh," she said, "I was thinking of how I used to go down to the creek, and take off my clothes, and float in the water like a stick. It's good sometimes to be a stick."

(Patrick White, The Aunt's Story)

Re post # 29

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...l_Daily%20(309)