Betsy Sholl told us, and I probably could find the notes and maybe
the exact quote, if I hunted for them, that 100% E-prime does not make
good poetry. It loses too much of the natural rhythm of speech, the
natural rise and fall of energy levels. Only in a very few poems, she
suggested, should the energy levels be sustained at a total fever
pitch. We were talking about verbs, gerunds, state of being verbs and
the passive voice. She agreed that state of being verbs do not carry
the power of some very active and powerful verbs. She agreed that one
should always use the best verb possible—and the best word.
But writing in E-prime is like doing scales. It's a mental
discipline. One practices E-prime to learn and to inform the mind.
But then, one relaxes a little reads the piece aloud, and adds back
some appropriate gerunds and a few state of being verbs. The longer
the poem, the more important it is to lull for a moment before
plunging back into power.
While E-prime helps avoid confusion and often enhances clarity of
meaning, it also caused the writer to have fewer options for sentence
arrangement and therefore less variety and less interest. For
example, if "the pancakes were good" always becomes "I enjoyed the
pancakes," the repetitive sentence structure can become rather
tedious. (In my mind). The exercise is informative and useful, but
just that—an exercise.
If one translates really great, famous poetry into E-prime, it sounds
utterly wretched (and terrible).
I do realize that most you probably already know all this and are
aware of active, powerful verbs and passive voice.
I wrote a new poem in E-prime, and I revised an old poem into E-prime.
Keith likes the original un-E-prime-revised version best. That is so
often the case when I revise poems. People prefer the original. I
like SOME aspects of the old and some of the new, but I will hand in
the E-prime version for feedback. I'm still working on the new poem.
I wrote the first draft yesterday, exactly 20 lines of E-prime (I
think it's 100% E-prime.) But I didn't like it as it was for a
variety of reasons, and in the process of revising; it has gotten a
little longer (21 lines at the moment). But there are still 5 more
days to revise, so we'll see.
The poem I revised to E-prime is short. Or was short (it's still
pretty short). I think short poems can better stand E-prime than long
ones, as Betsy suggested. And the subject is active. I was inspired
to revise a poem on this topic (sex) after all the hilarity about it
at the Springfed Rereat.
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