The following is an example of the kinds of thinking about the line that makes “The Difference” such an exciting course.
The power of verse can be demonstrated by putting a well-made piece of prose through some changes. (Note: No prose was harmed in the production of the comparison below!)
Here is a vivid passage from Paul Harding’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Tinkers. Read it silently, sub-vocalizing if you like, and then say it aloud:
What if she breaks Daddy's mouth? George thought. Get the stick in, Georgie—the end. Get it in. Work it in. Howard's head banged the floor and banged the floor and banged the floor again. George managed to wedge the end of the stick in between his father's teeth at the side of his mouth. Kathleen instantly took the stick and ferociously worked it deeper. Without looking, she grabbed a seat cushion from the floor and slid it under her husband's head in between bangs on the floor. Howard's feet kicked at the legs of the table. Darla stood in the doorway and shrieked. Margie gasped for breath. Joe squealed. Daddy's broken! That's it, Georgie; that's almost it, little lamb.
This crucial moment in the strange narrative told by Tinkers is alive with voices. Its sentences are varied and intricately knit. It is the product of a hundred artful choices, very few of which feel, in the context of reading the whole novel, heavy-handed or contrived. I’d like to say that Harding’s language here is a kind of poetry. I think many poets who publish today would be hard-pressed to come up with fourteen sentences in a row that are so interesting, so responsive to each other. But it is not verse, but prose. As much as this passage does to your lungs and lips when you read it aloud, none of the decisions Harding made when he constructed this passage had to do with the line.
What will we learn if we find verse lines for Harding’s prose? From the limitless linear measures we might choose to introduce, I’ve chosen two possibilities.
The first versifying of Harding’s prose, in blue, is broadly speaking, traditional, in that it seeks a strong but not rigid regularity of line length based on syllable count.
Say the passage in blue aloud. How different Harding’s language feels when it is parsed out at six, seven, or eight syllables per line! Written (and read) as verse, purposely built of lines of a certain kind, the language of Tinkers does all that it does as prose, and—without saying that it is better in verse—we can feel that it does “more”:
What if she breaks Daddy's mouth?
George thought. Get the stick in,
Georgie—the end. Get it in.
Work it in. Howard's head
Banged the floor and banged the floor
And banged the floor again.
George managed to wedge the end
Of the stick in between his
Father's teeth at the side
Of his mouth. Kathleen instantly
Took the stick and ferociously
Worked it deeper. Without looking,
She grabbed a seat cushion
From the floor and slid it
Under her husband's head
In between bangs on the floor.
Howard's feet kicked at the legs
Of the table. Darla stood
In the doorway and shrieked. Margie
Gasped for breath. Joe squealed. Daddy's
Broken! That's it, Georgie;
That's almost it, little lamb.
The content of the prose is preserved, but how differently the passage reads when it is lineated as verse! This “more” than prose that verse does to readers could be expanded here for the length of a book. But let’s defer that now and instead get a sense of how different decisions about the line will in each case produce a different “more.”
Say the following passage of “free verse” aloud, attending to its lineation. Do you recognize this as Harding’s prose? Again it is the same words, and the same sentence syntax. On a second or third read-through, you might begin to track the particular differences that inhere in this modern, sprawling, twin-columned structure that breathily emphasizes and contrasts the effects of one, two, three, and four syllable lines, below, in green:
What if
she breaks
Daddy's
mouth? George
thought.
Get the stick in,
Georgie— the end.
Get it in.
Work it
in. Howard's
head banged
the floor and banged
the floor and
banged the floor
again.
George
managed
to wedge
the end
of the stick
in between his
father's teeth
at the side
of his
mouth.
Kathleen
instantly took
the stick
and ferociously
worked
it
deeper.
Without looking,
She grabbed
a seat
cushion
from the floor
and slid it
under
her husband's
head
in between
bangs
on the floor.
Howard's feet
kicked at the legs
of the table.
Darla
stood in the doorway
and shrieked.
Margie
gasped for breath.
Joe squealed.
Daddy's
broken!
That's
it, Georgie;
That's almost
it,
little lamb.
These green lines transform Harding’s language even more radically than the blue lines do—the “more” they achieve is powerfully different from that achieved by the lines in blue. With the passage above still on your breath, try to recall the feel of the original prose. And compare, for a moment, the particular emphases achieved by the blue and the green lineations.
Wasn’t it Frost who wrote about two roads diverging? In this comparison, we see how powerful lines are, and how the choice of one line over another line can make “all the difference.”
The green lines force the eye back and forth, which adds an urgency in reading that becomes a bit more antic when the green lines are spaced most closely together (the heat of the violence); when the spacing lengthens out, the pace slows (you can feel "Margie gasp for breath", for example). The voices also seem more defined and individualized.
ReplyDeleteToo, how I hear the blue differ from the green relates directly to the line length. In the blue, the punctuation (comma, exclamation, end-stop, etc.) are visibly clearer; the reader knows when to breath and pause and can "get" that from a total visual scan of the whole piece.
The restriction of the green lines to one or two words creates a kind of staccato effect, which in turn has implications for how one senses the violence - that is, as something out of control. And how striking then, that final "little lamb" becomes.
Wonderful exercise.