For Fresh Language–No More “Dancing Words”

 

          “Dancing words” are words that you see too often frolicking across newspaper stories and extensively extracting interest from poems, thus leaving bland lines of verse. These are words that reporters grab for quick picturesque language as they glimpse the clock handles nearing the deadline. One of these words is “dancing” itself – “dancing autumn leaves.” Leaves are continually dancing in poetry. With this common image you leave a bland group of words, really an empty space as far as emotional effect is concerned. Bland because so familiar so it does not have the effect of being the surprise that less used words produce. Why can’t the multi-hued leaves do a Charleston, a hula hula, a cake walk, a square dance, a shimmy? With names of any of the dance types you give your poem fresh and interesting language.

         

          I find myself using “dancing” generically for all the ordinarily used words. But it is requesting a lot to think of “bursting” as in “bursting spring buds” as a dancing word – or for an inert word like “blanket” as in “blanket of snow”. Possible when you tag an “ed” or “ing” on the word to get snow “blanketed” or “blanketing” the blue Toyota in the driveway, Okay, I have had fun with this idea, but I am not serious about it.

 

   I wager that in winter the most frequently appearing cliché in newspaper storm stories is “blanket” or its forms. I saw it three times in one newspaper story – but that was a big storm and a long story and the reporter obviously didn’t have time to pull out the thesaurus and dictionary. I know. I relied on that “blanket” as a 20-year-old reporter on the Geneva (New York) Daily Times assigned the winter storm beat.  You have time with your poem to find other covers. How about “snow quilted the streets” or “snow quilted roofs.”

 

          Spring is always “bursting” Other than being cliché, the armaments connotation of this word is not appropriate for the quiet rise of shoots and opening of buds. Spring is a not a “bursting.” Spring is a return, a reappearance, a revival, a renewal’ Find the synonyms that go with these ideas

         

          You will recognize other “dancing words” in your students’ poems. Urge the young writers to use the different word – especially the word that would be unexpected. It is this bit of crafting that can render a good poem into a poem that is accepted as literature.

 

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