Well, I have to acknowledge that most fine poems are relatively light on the modifiers; I resisted the numerical notion only because many of the great moments in poetry also happen to involve modifiers, and I feared a rule that might discourage people from using modifiers to powerful effect.
Of course Frost's line is better with its noun before the adjective, but which do you prefer, "Thou still unravished bride of quietness" or "Thou bride of quietness, still unravished"? Maybe it's more difficult to use modifiers than other parts of speech, but that doesn't mean that one shouldn't do it and try to make it come out right. Sonnets are difficult, too, but we don't conclude that poets therefore shouldn't write them. If your modifier is "still unravished" or something equally interesting, it's unfair to compare it with weaker words like "slightly" or "red", for example.
Of course, Wiley is only saying not to use too many of them, not to use none at all. But I wouldn't want this caution to mean anything more than "be careful using modifiers" or to serve as a justification for inversions unnatural.
What I said about the difference between longer and shorter lines did not sanction the padding of longer lines with modifiers, of course. I merely suggested that it's easier to find room for any word, modifier or not, if you have four or five feet rather than two or three. Since nouns and verbs are essential, and modifiers are expendible in terms of being able to create real sentences, it follows, I think, that modifiers could get in the way when writing shorter lines. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep" has three modifiers that take three of the four metrical beats. These modifiers could not have found room in a dimeter line, and it would take some doing to clear a whole line of trimeter for them. Given the difference between longer and shorter lines in this regard, it stands to reason that "acceptable" ratios should differ as well.
But I know I'll be more alert to modifiers in my own work as a result of this conversation, so the Golias Razor has succeeded in raising my consciousness on the issue whatever the merits of its specific arithmatic.
|