The Everything Writing Poetry Book (8 page)

For example, if you write “Elliot hits the ball,”
hits
is the verb, and
Elliot
is the subject. The subject is doing the action stated by the verb, so it is in
active voice
. If you write “The ball is hit by Elliot,” the phrase
is hit
is the verb and
ball
is the subject, but the subject now receives the action stated by the verb, making it
passive voice
. A passive voice verb will always take a form of
be
as a helping verb. But notice also that the true actor,
Elliot
, is now set forth in the prepositional phrase
by Elliot
. Grammatically, you do not need to include
by Elliot
to have a complete sentence in the passive voice.

Similarly, in the sentence “He is a police officer,” the verb
is
shows a state of being rather than an action. Linking verbs such as
to be
force the writer to tell the readers about people, objects, and places rather than use details to reveal those subjects. By using active verbs, you can rewrite the previous sentence in lines of poetry:

Badge flashing in the dim light
,
holster creaking as he draws his gun
,
the man drops to a crouch
.
“Freeze!” he shouts
.

Now the details of the badge and the holster reveal that the subject is a police officer, and his actions provide a sense of expectation—what will happen next? Passive constructions will not help your poetry. Avoid them, and instead use active verbs to create tension and excitement in your writing.

Avoiding Modifiers

Adjectives tell you
how many, which one
, and
what kind
and describe nouns. Adverbs tell you
when, where, how, how often, why, to what degree
, and
in what condition
and describe verbs, other adverbs, and adjectives. Adjectives and adverbs—and the phrases and clauses that operate the same way—will add extra detail to your nouns and verbs, just like garnishes add extra color to your dinner entrées. Don't use too many sprigs of mint or parsley in your poetry. The main course—the nouns and verbs in the poem—must be the thing that stands out to your reader.

For example, in the phrase “walk slowly,” the verb
walk
is accompanied by an adverb,
slowly
, that may be unnecessary. A careful writer should find a stronger verb that means the same as
walk slowly
to eliminate the adverb and bring more strength to the verb. For example, the verbs
creep, dawdle
, and
trudge
all indicate a slow walk, but they also show with more detail the intent behind the walk—without the use of an adverb.

Some adjectives and adverbs imply judgment rather than add detail. For example, in the sentence “David clumsily lifted the chair,” the adverb
clumsily
reveals the speaker's assessment of how David lifted the chair. Similarly, the sentences “She is beautiful” and “The ugly man entered the room” contain vague, judgmental adjectives
(beautiful, ugly)
. They offer little help to the weak verb
(is)
, the pronoun
(she)
, and the abstract noun
(man)
forming the sentences.

Grammar Tricks

You may be surprised to learn that grammar can help you with your use of details. However, the better you understand grammar, the more ways you can intensify the description in your poetry. For example, adjectives, appositives, participles, and absolutes are just four of the grammatical structures that can help you build poetic details.

Adjectives

If you insist on finding a home for your adjectives, try this trick first. Adjectives commonly appear in two places: immediately before the nouns they modify, as in the phrase “the
dirty
car”; or after a linking verb, as in “The car is
dirty
.” If you are placing your adjectives only in these two spots, try putting them in another place. Much like rearranging the furniture in your living room gives your house a new look, moving your adjectives will give your sentences, and your writing, a fresh appearance.

Here's how to do it. Let's take the previous phrase: “The dirty car.” Take the adjective
dirty
and put it behind the noun
car
, and set it off with a comma: “The car, dirty.” Now you probably sense that the adjective is out of place. For instance, you would not say: “The car, dirty, sat in the driveway.” But in its new position, the adjective can take on an added detail—a comparison, for example, beginning with the word
as:

The car, dirty
as a pig in slop,
sat in the driveway
.

You can also add more detail using the word
with:

The car, dirty
with muck and sand
from a foray through the riverbed,
sat in the driveway
.

Appositives

Appositives are structures that repeat something using different terms. For example, consider the phrase “the dirty car, an old Mustang.” The word
Mustang
is another way of referring to the noun
car
that comes before it. A noun that repeats another noun is the most common form of appositive. In the previous example, the second noun,
Mustang
, is more concrete than the first noun,
car
. This shows the power of good appositives. They don't just rename; they also make more specific the object, person, or place being described.

You can make appositives out of other grammatical structures, too. For example, take the sentence used earlier, “The dirty car sat in the driveway,” and tag more verbs onto it:

The dirty car sat in the driveway,
settled into the deepening snow,
hunkered beneath a layer of ice
.

The verbs
settled
and
hunkered
add more detail about the way the car sits in the driveway. First, they are more concrete than the original verb,
sit
, and second, they allow for the addition of more concrete nouns—
deepening snow
and
layer of ice
—to describe the state of the car. Here are some more examples of appositives:

• Noun phrase: She found the court jester
a rascal, a buffoon, a loudmouthed braggart
.

• Prepositional phrase:
At dawn, at the moment the rooster crowed
, the farm came alive.

• Subordinate clause:
Before he left that day, before he took that suitcase filled with his manuscripts, old love letters, and underwear
, he left me the goodbye note on the mantel.

Participles

Participles are words that look like verbs but don't work like verbs. They have the
-ing
or the
-ed
(or
-en, -t, -d
) endings that belong to verbs, but they behave differently. For example, look at these two sentences:

• I am eating a pie.

• Eating a pie, I watched cartoons on TV.

The word
eating
has the -
ing
ending. In the first sentence, the word
am
appears before it. That little word in front of an -
ing
word tells you that the phrase “am eating” is working as a verb. Other words such as
is, are, was, were, has been
, and
had been
will also tell you that an -
ing
word is working as a verb. Without those little words to signal the verb function of the -
ing
word, the -
ing
word is working as a participle.

But what exactly does that mean? In the sentence “Eating a pie, I watched cartoons on TV,” the word
eating
still names an action—the action of eating the pie—and someone is still doing the action—the
I
in the sentence. However, the verb in the sentence is
watched
. The words
I watched
form the subject-verb pair necessary to create that sentence. The words
eating a pie
add an extra detail about the subject of the sentence—a secondary action—that gives us more information to work with.

Here are more examples of the participle in use:

•
Shuddering
, the dirty car sat in the driveway.

• The dirty car,
sputtering
and
spinning its wheels
, sat in the driveway.

• The dirty car sat in the driveway,
dented in the hood by the falling branches
.

In all of these examples, no matter what form the participles take, and no matter what position the participles are in, they add extra details about the subject of the sentences, the word
car
.

Absolutes

The absolute in its most basic form appears as a noun plus a participle. Like the other structures, the absolute adds a specific detail about something that already appears in a sentence. For example, if you return to the sentence about the dirty car, you can add different absolutes to give new information about the car:

•
Wipers swishing
, the dirty car sat in the driveway.

•
Windshield covered with ice
, the dirty car sat in the driveway.

• The dirty car,
driver's seat spattered with mud
, sat in the driveway.

The first example has the basic form of the absolute, noun plus participle. The second example shows the participle
covered
with a modifier of its own,
with ice
. The third example shows that the absolute, like the participle, can appear in different places in the sentence. In each of the previous examples, the absolute focuses on a specific part of the car—the wipers, the windshield, the driver's seat—and attaches a detail to that part. This gives the reader a fuller impression of the car itself.

The absolute can come in different forms—noun plus prepositional phrase, noun plus adjective, noun plus noun—but all work in the same manner as the basic form. Here are examples of the other forms:

• Noun plus prepositional phrase: The dirty car,
open door at attention
, sat in the driveway.

• Noun plus adjective: The dirty car,
headlights bright
and
door open
, sat in the driveway.

• Noun plus noun: The dirty car,
its open door a gateway to freedom
, sat in the driveway.

As with the earlier examples, the absolutes focus the reader's attention on a specific detail about the car—in this case, the open door and the bright headlights.