AuntShecky
08-23-2007, 12:46 PM
A fine contemporary British novelist, Martin Amis, once said that he would rather die than write a sentence as mundane as "He walked through the door." Similarly, when an editor from the New Yorker was asked when did he stop reading a submitted manuscript, he answered, "I stop reading when I come to the first cliche."
I can see the point. All of us, however, at one point or another get intellectually lazy, and reach for an old comfortable phrase, as well-worn as the shirt your spouse keeps bugging you to toss, in order to get a point across in a hurry.
But the danger of cliches is that they are stereotypes. In the following bit of free verse by your ol' Auntie, the speaker of the poem might be a fugitive from a PETA meeting as the piece rails against painting our fellow creatures with the same brush (and that right there is another cliche! They keep turning up like old pennies. Oh no, still another one! See what I mean?)
Zoo-ming in On Cliches
Like a snake in the grass what lurks behind lines sappy?
Assuming that crocodiles weep and bluebirds are happy,
That mice are quiet, and lemmings leap off the brink,
That turtles are slow, and skunks of course stink;
Without warning tigers suddenly turn on their trainers;
Mules are stubborn, oxen are dumb: both no-brainers;
Gorilla beat their chests, wolves are thought to howl,
And “Who” has more wisdom than the Wise Old Owl?
Citing the nine lives of cats, letting sleeping dogs lie,
We lionize the humane who'd never hurt a fly.
Sheep follow the flock; pigs wallow in a sty.
Re: the birds and the bees:
amoebae divide and rabbits multiply.
Drawn to preconceptions as moths to a flame,
Like hyenas we laugh, when we stoop to defame.
Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.
(NOTE: The line breaks occur at the rhyming word. I don't know why the configuration of the lines became different when I posted the verse.)
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I can see the point. All of us, however, at one point or another get intellectually lazy, and reach for an old comfortable phrase, as well-worn as the shirt your spouse keeps bugging you to toss, in order to get a point across in a hurry.
But the danger of cliches is that they are stereotypes. In the following bit of free verse by your ol' Auntie, the speaker of the poem might be a fugitive from a PETA meeting as the piece rails against painting our fellow creatures with the same brush (and that right there is another cliche! They keep turning up like old pennies. Oh no, still another one! See what I mean?)
Zoo-ming in On Cliches
Like a snake in the grass what lurks behind lines sappy?
Assuming that crocodiles weep and bluebirds are happy,
That mice are quiet, and lemmings leap off the brink,
That turtles are slow, and skunks of course stink;
Without warning tigers suddenly turn on their trainers;
Mules are stubborn, oxen are dumb: both no-brainers;
Gorilla beat their chests, wolves are thought to howl,
And “Who” has more wisdom than the Wise Old Owl?
Citing the nine lives of cats, letting sleeping dogs lie,
We lionize the humane who'd never hurt a fly.
Sheep follow the flock; pigs wallow in a sty.
Re: the birds and the bees:
amoebae divide and rabbits multiply.
Drawn to preconceptions as moths to a flame,
Like hyenas we laugh, when we stoop to defame.
Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.
(NOTE: The line breaks occur at the rhyming word. I don't know why the configuration of the lines became different when I posted the verse.)
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