My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #34, March 29, 1999

LIMITED SUCCESS

We Americans have never much liked limits, on our behavior or on our art. We may well lead the world in our contempt for the picky little rules of manners, grammar, spelling, and poetic and musical form.

I am here to defend those picky little rules, because without them, I believe, neither society nor art can exist.

For one thing, if there were no rules, how could kids ever hope to thumb their noses at grownups? Without social norms of dress and behavior to be violated, how could they express rebellion? It would be like trying to throw a body punch into a beanbag. Those of us who were sixties kids have done no favors for our kids by loosening up the rules. When every day is casual dress day, and almost anything goes, what can our kids do to shock us? We may well have forced them to wear nose rings and tattoos, and dye their hair blue to make their point.

Consider, too, the sad plight of profanity. Gone with the Wind broke new ground in 1939 when Rhett Butler said "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"--the Hayes code had not previously allowed that word to be used in movies. And I was 22 years old before I ever heard anybody actually say the F word. I had been led to believe that men used those words among themselves, but they didn't in the presence of ladies.

Which meant that when men in those days DID use profane language, the words had power and force, indicated intensity and passion. If you didn't understand what a man was saying, or if you were ignoring him, that language demanded your attention.

Now that there are no limits anymore, as those words are used casually and frequently in movies and conversation, we have become numb to them. We tune them out, like so much ugly offensive noise. They convey no passion anymore, merely attitude. We have no words left, now, that carry that force: "You MUST listen to me, this is important!"

Without rules and limits, there could be no games or sports. You can't play football without a consistent playing field and scoring system, and without innings, strikes and runs, baseball would be nothing but an elaborate game of catch.

Without gravity, what would be the point of a triple jump in ice skating? The magic of ice skating is in the athlete's ability to make it seem effortless, as if the limit of gravity did not apply. In fact, we could almost believe it IS effortless, if it weren't for all the falls even world class skaters take when attempting them. We need to see those failures to truly understand how great the successes are.

Formal and natural limits are also a challenge to the skill of artists and poets and composers. Great artists dance so skillfully with their limits that you don't even realize the limits exist. Consider how amazing it is that artists routinely show us 3-dimensional reality on 2-dimensional canvases and screens, so well that we believe we're seeing all 3 dimensions. We don't realize how hard artists had to work to trick us into seeing depth where there is none. The limitation made the technique and the art necessary.

Formal limits have the same power in literature. When most poetry follows a standard metric pattern and rhyme scheme, poets can evoke emotional reactions, and force attention, by skillful deviation from the form. Walt Whitman could not have attracted the attention he did if it weren't for the widely understood formal conventions he violated. But he could not have gained any acceptance if he did not also use formal poetic conventions like alliteration and assonance and rhythm. However free of rules he pretended to make it, his work still SOUNDED like poetry.

Meter and rhyme are two of the limits that poets challenge themselves with. Once we have written a first line, everything that follows must relate to the meter, rhyme, and sense of that first line. Let me show you how the process works. I've just made up an an opening line:
If I'm to make my living on my writing, what is indicated...

My next line could repeat the rhythm, the rhyme, or both. It would be easy enough to find rhymes for just the last two syllables of "indicated," but the real temptation is to pull off the hat trick by coming up with a quadruple rhyme, like this:
Is to make more for the same work, which I'd do if it got syndicated.

So far, so good. But I have now set up a set of expectations:

• I have a rhyming couplet, which requires another rhyming couplet.
• I have committed myself to a complicated lengthy rhythmic pattern of some 15-17 beats per line.
• By conventions of English verse, quadruple rhymes and ya-TA-ta-ta-ta-TA-ta rhythms are only used in light verse. In two lines I have said "This is not serious stuff." I am now obligated to be amusing.

In short, it took only two lines to write myself into a hole. In getting myself out of it, I may end up someplace I never realized I was going, driven by the formal requirements of those first two lines. But if our limits land us in the hole in the first place, they're also the ladder we use to climb back out of it. Getting out of the hole with style is what makes art both challenging and fun; when you can pull it off, you are really pleased with yourself.

Everyday, we all, in our own ways, struggle to use or overcome our limits. Spud Webb, 5'4" and too short to dunk a basketball, turned his size into an asset, using his speed and understanding of the game to play great basketball. Emily Dickinson turned her isolation into poetry that connects us all with a shared shock of recognition. My limit is, I'm 55--if I'm going to become what I want to be, I have to start right now. Turning our limits into strengths, we make an art form of our lives.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's how that verse came out--the verse created as a working partnership between my mind and the limits I made for myself:

If I'm to make my living on my writing, what is indicated
Is to make more for the same work, which I'd do if it got syndicated.
Which means I'll go on bended knee to publishers and editors
To claim my stuff's almost as good as most of my competitors:
Bob Greene and Anne Lamott (who I believe I am a cross of),
Molly Ivins and Anna Quindlen (who I still regret the loss of
Since she started writing novels and gave up her New York Times job--
Which is NOT like ditching any ordinary nickel-and-dimes job).
And if I do convince them, make the big time, you get credit--
You made it fun to write my column, because you actually read it.
You told me that the thoughts I had were things that were worth saying in it.
I call myself a writer, now. That's my job, and I'm staying in it.