grammatical dilemma

Aug 18, 2009 19:44

Usually, I pride myself on being a grammarian. Still, I am a product of the environment in which I was raised ( Read more... )

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Comments 9

archethereal August 20 2009, 09:47:45 UTC
mm, perhaps arbitrarily, i feel more standardized/academic versions of poetry do not outstrip grammatical integrity.

she hung, a scythe of skin, until he dragged
her to the sand, that makeshift hallowed flag.

replacing "this" with "that".
and "hallowed"/"holy". because 'hallowed flag' sounds better than 'holy flag' to me, but this isn't my piece.
of course, i have no idea where else you're going with this piece, and i'm merely functioning on an all-over out-of-context basis.
i just tend to think "scythe" in kind of an "upright piece of thing on which you can hang stuff once you're done slicing up the figurative shizdiggy" basis.

buuuuut,
what do i know.

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novapsyche August 27 2009, 07:20:12 UTC
Thanks for your input. I appreciate the thought you put into your reply.

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katia_chan August 20 2009, 12:24:44 UTC
I'm not a poet myself [unless forced into it by academics,] but I think you've got all the poetic license in the world. Poetry has never uniformly stuck to grammatical principles.

If it's important to you to keep it perfectly within grammar laws, then you might have to rework it. But otherwise, use the words that sound good to you. You're writing a poem, not a paper.

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novapsyche August 27 2009, 07:23:20 UTC
I appreciate your sentiment. As I said, I'd crossposted this, and in another community two separate commenters noted that they'd misread the word the exact same way. Also, it took them out of the poem. That gave me enough reason to make a decision.

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internought August 20 2009, 13:03:20 UTC
Use drug, for Christ's sake. Shakespeare never cared about grammar.

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lazerbug August 20 2009, 14:07:08 UTC
IAWTC. Like, times 10.

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buboniclou August 20 2009, 17:39:15 UTC
I edited a friend's book of sonnets. I would have told him to keep it--in poetry, getting the image across is more important than nitpicking past tenses or conforming to standard dialects. If anything, it gives your poetry more flavor as a southerner, and that can be a good thing.

P.S. I'm a child of Texans who was born and raised in New York, and every so often I find myself slipping into their usages. I'm rather fond of it, but then it's usually harmless stuff. I've been known to say "drug".

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stagemanager August 20 2009, 18:16:11 UTC
It would be far, far better to use "drug" than to try and force any sort of bastardized 'rhyme' of dragged/rug.

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