YES, POETS DO SOMETIMES BEND ENGLISH

Non-poets lodge many complaints about poets and the way they write. One frequent complaint is that poets often upset the usual pattern of English.

But what is that “usual” pattern? It is true that communication in English depends rather strongly on the order of words. This is different in other languages.

English likes its subject to appear early in a sentence, and to precede any action word (verb) attributed to it—”The subject jumped” (or sang, or wobbled, etc.)

Poets do at times break this order, but they generally do so only when creating suspense or emphasis. Non-poets do not like this, always preferring to change the order into ordinary prose which robs the poetry of its opportunity to make the reader take notice of the thought, the meaning, the importance of the few words just read.

When lyricists do the same thing to the accompaniment of music, non-poets generally accept the “misplaced” word(s) and just sing along. Shouldn’t they allow the same courtesy to poets?

The lyric began as a poetry form, and a poet (not musician or lyricist for a musician) can still write a poem classed as a “lyric”.

Okay, okay, I hear your cries. I admit that some poets might not like to be lumped into the group writing “doo-wop, she-bang, nah, nah, nah” and similar nonsense sounds repeated over and over. This does not change anything.

I say that excellent poets are not torturing English when they choose the occasional inversion of word order. I will not, however, support the unconsidered or over-use of this technique which sometimes occurs in writing that wants to claim the title of “poetry”.

Non-poets and poets alike cringe when encountering such writing. But poets end up burdened with the calumny of this writing, plead though we might our innocence (notice the inversion in this prose sentence?)

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