clichés

[blp]

There. I started the thread, so the word gets an accent. :D



I don't want to risk high-jacking Sophia's thread, so maybe it would be a good idea, blp, if you or I started a thread in the discussion of literary matters re cliches? Personally I think that the strenuous reach to avoid using a so-called cliche can be more egregious than the cliche itself and in general that we should not study or practice Poetry as a Second Language.

OK, I've started it. I sort of thought this might come up, as it has before.

I guess my objection needs qualifying: my grounds for objeting to these things are not rote vs. rote. It's not that they're not allowed in the big book of poetry style or they provide some quick, pat way of judging a poem bad. I genuinely dislike them. I think they're dull and I think they cork up possibilities for good poetry. You can see why they would - in so many cases, they were once good poetry themselves, clever, elliptical ways someone thought up for expressing an idea or feeling. Where they're metaphors, as they frequently are, they're metaphors we no longer even recognise as metaphors. The mere fact of their use suggests the need for a metaphor, but one that's been rather welched on by the use of one almost entirely drained of its expressive and associative power.

The classic example is 'blood curdling'. The actual idea, when you think about it, is beautifully, disgustingly expressive of horror; but of course no one ever thinks about it now.

Take the example from Sophia's poem, her title: A Wrung Napkin Speaks Volumes. No disrespect to Sophia - the poem was great - but the phrase 'speaks volumes' is banal and, as a metaphor, may not even get at what she really wants to say very precisely. In its now standard usage, it just means 'says a lot', but if it was new, you'd think about the books that could be filled decoding the wrung napkin and a whole poem might flow from that, exploring the theme further.

As it is, I'd prefer 'A Wrung Napkin Says A Lot' for its declarative simplicity. From there, it would just be a short step to 'A Wrung Napkin Says So Much', which, in strategically employing a greeting card type cliché, might go a little way towards conveying some of the poem's thwarted romance. Not saying that's what she should call it, just trying to show that these things provide some of our best opportunities for play and insight, but we can easily walk past them half asleep if we just chuck in the cliché. The language in a poem should wake us up.

[blp]

Oh, and, as an aside, mods, can we have a sub-forum for discussing how to write poetry? There seems to be an increasing need.

[PrinceMyshkin]

To start with the example you spent some time on, I think "A Wrung Napkin Speaks Volumes" is precisely right and better than "says a lot" might have been precisely because of the comic juxtaposition of a napkin elevated to the status of a witness in a trial (a fresh and novel idea) attached with the precisely banal!

For me it's often a question of how startled or vivid a reaction the poet appears to expect from his/her use of a familiar phrase or image. If it is mentioned en passant, fine; but if it is so positioned that we are asked to stop and marvel at it, then the poet has either misjudged his/her audience or hasn't read enough of existing literature.

And I would almost rather read a familiar even hackneyed term than feel as if the language has been tormented out of shape to sound original. I seldom enjoy poems that have been written by those who have studied Poetry as a Second Language.

[TheFifthElement]

I think it's a cliché when it's used without thought to the origin or meaning or appropriateness of the phrase. For example, I have heard, many times, people saying 'it's like Beirut out there' when patently they have not been to Beirut, and probably it isn't anything like Beirut really, but it's a phrase which has become so common that it's used without thinking. I think clichés can be used in poetry, but where used they should probably be deliberate and, perhaps, ironic, and not out of poetic laziness. Poetry, to me, is about challenging the use of language, pushing the boundaries. I don't think you can say you're doing that if you're following common use.

And I've probably been guilty of it time and again :p

[TheFifthElement]

This is a good example of the cliché put to good use:


Symposium

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it hold
its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.
Every good dog has a stitch in time. Two heads? You've been sold
one good turn. One good turn deserves a bird in the hand.

A bird in the hand is better than no bread.
To have your cake is to pay Paul.
Make have while you can still hit the nail on the head.
For want of a nail the sky might fall.

People in glass houses can't see the wood
for the new broom. Rome wasn't built between two stools.
Empty vessels wait for no man...

Paul Muldoon

(excerpt)

[blp]

To start with the example you spent some time on, I think "A Wrung Napkin Speaks Volumes" is precisely right and better than "says a lot" might have been precisely because of the comic juxtaposition of a napkin elevated to the status of a witness in a trial (a fresh and novel idea) attached with the precisely banal!

For me it's often a question of how startled or vivid a reaction the poet appears to expect from his/her use of a familiar phrase or image. If it is mentioned en passant, fine; but if it is so positioned that we are asked to stop and marvel at it, then the poet has either misjudged his/her audience or hasn't read enough of existing literature.

And I would almost rather read a familiar even hackneyed term than feel as if the language has been tormented out of shape to sound original. I seldom enjoy poems that have been written by those who have studied Poetry as a Second Language.

Well, I don't think it's a matter of studying poetry as a second language. This seems to suggest that you think poetry should be as natural as speaking - an idea you've appeared to stand against in the case of Bukowski's poetry. I do like poetry that sounds like the author is at ease with the language and not putting on airs - including that of Bukowski - but I don't like it to be thoughtless or sound like it was written by an estate agent.

I don't know if there's much more to say. Tomahto.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Well, I don't think it's a matter of studying poetry as a second language. This seems to suggest that you think poetry should be as natural as speaking - an idea you've appeared to stand against in the case of Bukowski's poetry. I do like poetry that sounds like the author is at ease with the language and not putting on airs - including that of Bukowski - but I don't like it to be thoughtless or sound like it was written by an estate agent.

I don't know if there's much more to say. Tomahto.

I don't think that poetry should be this that or the other but only that I'm more comfortable writing it that way. Bukowski, on the other hand, always seems to me to be playing Bukowski, though I confess I haven't tried all that hard to see beyond his persona.

[~Sophia~]

Take the example from Sophia's poem, her title: A Wrung Napkin Speaks Volumes. No disrespect to Sophia - the poem was great - but the phrase 'speaks volumes' is banal and, as a metaphor, may not even get at what she really wants to say very precisely.

No offense taken blp.


but I don't like it to be thoughtless or sound like it was written by an estate agent. .

and I don't know if this was about my title but I can assure you I thought about it and I'm not an estate agent. :lol:

I'm not particularly fond of cliches either and I do try to avoid them for the most part but, with this particular poem, I weighed the options and thought it worked. Peace out (I know, cliche LOL)

[firefangled]

This seems to suggest that you think poetry should be as natural as speaking - an idea you've appeared to stand against in the case of Bukowski's poetry. I do like poetry that sounds like the author is at ease with the language and not putting on airs - including that of Bukowski - but I don't like it to be thoughtless or sound like it was written by an estate agent.

I don't know if there's much more to say. Tomahto.

There is a difference to me between poetry as natural as speaking and poetry being as easy as speaking. To write a poem that sounds as natural as speaking can be quite difficult, much like purposefully trying to sing off key.

Poetry is heightened language to communicate something. Some somethings would not be well served in the rhythms or sounds of speech. As far as those cicadas go, they're valid when nothing else will do but cicadas, the presence or absence of.

[Virgil]

I think it's a cliché when it's used without thought to the origin or meaning or appropriateness of the phrase. For example, I have heard, many times, people saying 'it's like Beirut out there' when patently they have not been to Beirut, and probably it isn't anything like Beirut really, but it's a phrase which has become so common that it's used without thinking. I think clichés can be used in poetry, but where used they should probably be deliberate and, perhaps, ironic, and not out of poetic laziness. Poetry, to me, is about challenging the use of language, pushing the boundaries. I don't think you can say you're doing that if you're following common use.

And I've probably been guilty of it time and again :p
I think Fifth expresses everything I would say on the subject. And Fifth, we've all been guilty of slipping cliches in. :D



There is a difference to me between poetry as natural as speaking and poetry being as easy as speaking. To write a poem that sounds as natural as speaking can be quite difficult, much like purposefully trying to sing off key.

Poetry is heightened language to communicate something. Some somethings would not be well served in the rhythms or sounds of speech. As far as those cicadas go, they're valid when nothing else will do but cicadas, the presence or absence of.
As to the tension between "natural" language and "heightened" language, I've given my thoughts on this many time on lit net, in fact recently a few days ago in Delta's poem here: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=670900&postcount=9. I used the terms elegant for natural and charged for heightened, but I'm referring to the same thing.

[blp]

I can assure you I thought about it and I'm not an estate agent.

Don't worry, I believe you! :)

[mono]

I admit that, in speech, I use cliches almost every other sentence, even though, I agree with you, blp, that it can sometimes reflect what I call 'constipated thinking' (stolen from the film Finding Forrester); few writers can get away with a truly original and witty metaphor or simile, and I suppose it depends upon the taste of the reader - pick up any romance novellette, turn to any page, and you will see some ridiculous estrogenic cliches, for example.
Admittedly, I have used a few cliches here and there in my own writing, but I often have the intention of writing a parody, in that case, instead of something in all seriousness; occasionally, sometimes always, a critic will misrepresent this more as something unoriginal, hackneyed, and simple, yet I suppose this places more emphasis upon the fact that no one will understand an individual's writing fully except him/herself (yikes, speaking of cliche! :p).
As an example of misrepresentations, the first play I wrote, I intended as a parody with a very predictable, common plot and scant mystery, other than a twist-and-turn here and there. Out of everyone who read it, I only know of two individuals who understood my intention. Not only did that pain me to the point of almost bastardizing that play, but no one has read it since then, for years. Sophia, do not get too down upon yourself - metaphors, similes, and co. have a sky's limit (ha! :D) . . . but, in all seriousness, all art takes practice, and what one individual could see featured on a commercial, due to its simplicity, others could see worthy of a Pulitzer - look at Jackson Pollock.