I wrote (or rather, pirated) this for the “How-To” prompt at Read Write Poem with inspiration from Geoffrey K. Pullum’s recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
_______________________________________________
Master the Art of Writer’s Block With Strunk and White
Avoid
a succession
of loose
sentences.
Use definite, specific, concrete language,
place yourself in the background
and make sure
the reader knows
who
is speaking.
Write in a way
that comes naturally,
but always prefer
the standard
to the offbeat,
avoid foreign languages
and do not
affect a breezy
manner.
Be clear.
Use a colon after an independent clause
to introduce a list of particulars,
an appositive,
an amplification,
or an illustrative quotation.
Avoid fancy words.
Write with nouns
and verbs.
Use figures of speech
sparingly
and do not construct
awkward adverbs.
Put statements in positive form.
Do not overwrite.
Do not overstate.
Do not inject opinion.
Place the emphatic words
of a sentence
at the end.
Do not explain too much.
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As I’m unfamiliar with Shrunk and White, I don’t know how this relates to them. To use concrete language is pretty much what I was taught in relation to poetry. Not to give opinionwas standard advice for writing essays. Pullman seems to be going contrary to this…could lead to a lot of irrelevant waffle? Your poem, on the other hand, is clear and coherent.
Carole, thanks for your comments. The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White has tyrannized generations of high school and college students in the US. I lived and wrote by it and used it when I taught high school English. I still adhere to much of it’s advice (like concrete language), but I like how Pullum questions the modern relevance of some of the edicts, points out their inherent contradictions, and shows how even decades ago S&W didn’t follow all the rules in their writing. It shed some light for me on why it was so difficult to use S&W to teach high school English in the last decade. Some of S&W made sense, but a lot of it didn’t, and my students could sniff that out. Nowadays, I find other resources (e.g., Lynn Truss on punctuation) more helpful both in their exactness and how they make clear where there’s flexibility.
Enjoyed your dialogue, but education wise, this is a step too far, for me.
Great job breaking out the S&W and turning it into a poem. We could save students the cost of the book and just show them your poem!
Ha! You are funny, Erin. Thanks.
i agree with erin..this is way above me…as a “jock” and a sociology major….english was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down on my list…but I admire how people can write and express themselves in the proper way….whatever that means…anyways this old guy always likes to read and learn
Thanks for the comments, Wayne. From what I can see, you express yourself very well. One of the things I never liked about using S&W to teach was that it did seem to block the learning of students who did not think of themselves as writers. They were often the first to see the contradictions in the rules and then became immobilized. I always tried to balance the learning of some rules (and I think other writers do a much better job of explaining the important ones than S&W) with encouragement to just write and find a voice. Perhaps not coincidentally, some of the students who struggled most with prose wrote beautiful poetry.
This is very interesting. I required this. Esp usage of fancy words, adverbs etc.,
What a funny and ironic poem! I love the way you crafted this out of good old S&W.
Love it! Good job I read your poem AFTER I’d written today though ~ it’s so ruthless I fear it would have had some power over me…
i like that you have deliberately followed strunk and white’s rules for writing and undermining them. the result is so clean and clinical, personality seems lost.