What You Say!

I used a term last time that literary critics employ in discussing poets and their work. A poet's "diction" is simply choice in language and phrasing.

To critics, diction is an important first reference in a poet's work, because that's what readers first encounter, especially when the poet is otherwise unknown to them.

But I'm putting it last because, for us, diction is more of a destination. Diction -- the term harkening back to poetry's roots as an oral medium -- is essential to your watermark. It's what people normally see lying directly behind your work, rather than those responses to innermost thoughts and experiences that create the watermark's stamp itself. The difference would be like that between the corporate logo and what (and who) made it.

I recall reading several years ago a book, Poetic Diction, that obviously went into detail about this subject. The thing I recall most distinctly is that the writer saw a profound difference between the phrases "prophets old" and "old prophets."

The first phrase, and its characteristic adjective/noun inversion, is -- of course -- Milton's. The diction critic was saying that the Miltonic phrase resounds with ancient echoes, while the term "old prophets" merely calls to mind elderly soothsayers. Milton's choice helped create his personal stamp.

All your work really is a set of choices. When those choices become so recognizably well-defined that readers know it's you almost immediately, you have your watermark.

And now you also have what I've been offering all along: poetry is the art of that definition.

The rest is up to you: lame habit or taut insight, loose usage or creative tension, string of cliches or a whorl of innovations.

It's all up to you, my friends. God speed.

(Note: text revised 3_31_10)