Sunday, July 22, 2018

Seems "Very" Hard to Do

Another thing that came up at the writing session I attended yesterday was a brief exercise in writing. One lady in the group discussed imagery, and those in the group each read lines from the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost, stopping to discuss the images depicted:


When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
(What do you see?)

The group leader than had those in the group write about the most stunning thing we saw that morning, trying to avoid the passive voice. Here is what I came up with:

It shone from afar, as the tourists were glancing at from behind the mission. It was hard to see what areal appears from where I was standing. The hill glowed very green from what I could see.

The instructor insisted that the word "very" was unnecessary in this passage. At home yesterday, I then saw this:





How often do you writers out there find yourself using "very" and how often do you ever use any of the word suggested in the chart above? Some seem a little out of my league of thought.  It would not occur to me to use some of these words without reading a blog post such as the one from which I obtained the graphic. I now see myself going over my manuscripts and trying to find how many times I used the word "very." Again, I'm not so sure how many of the suggested words I would dare use. 

3 comments:

Sandra Cox said...

Glad you enjoyed your writing session. I love the 'make those words pop' list:)

Elephant's Child said...

All of those words are familiar, and I use most of them. Sagacious? Not often. And some of them (depending on the context) could sound pretentious.

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