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The First and Usually Unspoken
Rule of Great Writing
The greatest rule of writing is to tell
A truth, the truth if possible, within
The scope of lines set out, to sound the knell
Of honeyed feelings, not commit the sin
Of telling things untrue, like showing men
As heroes always in a war or on
A horse, so boring, that is if no sten
Is cuddled in their hands, and only brawn
Defines their soldier souls. Blokes? For one truth
They stand. They are not made for women to
Desire in check-out novels. Those uncouth
Dishonesties are pukingly untrue.
_It’s simple. Do not lie. Don’t swerve away
__To falseness. Maintain truth in what you say.
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Phillip Whidden is an American living in England who has been published in America, England, Scotland (and elsewhere) in book form, online, and in journals.
Truth drawn from historical facts and observable data is important and it makes sense that this should be the hallmark of a great writer and writing. Dishonesties at this level are dastardly. After that, is where it seems we diverge. Heroic tales, whether fanciful or factual are important to any culture and poets have the obligation to tell those tales in various ways. Religious truth is another variant that for the believer is true, but for those who do not accept it, it is anathema. Fairy tales, allegories, and parables are important not only for the beautiful way they are written, but for the moral lessons, the dreams that are nurtured, and cultural support they provide.
Truth is not the only measurement of great writing. History and observable information must be truthful even in their embellishment. Once we are past those two cases The beauty of the words, the message, rhyme, and rhythm are the first order of business.
The problem with “truth” in poetry is that those who think they have it are generally aggressive and proselytizing. In other words, it becomes a justifying excuse for the three miseries of “meaning, message, and moral.”
Is the first and unspoken rule of eating the maintenance of physical health? Yeah, sure. But apart from crackpot nutritionists, everyone else knows that its purpose is the pleasure of satisfying one’s appetite with delicious and savory viands.
Poetry, like an excellently prepared meal, is for PLEASURE. It may involve various things like truth, or lying, or information, or excitement, or fright, or titillation, or dramatic interaction, but no sane reader is going to crack open a book verse unless he is sure of being entertained and delighted by fictive mimesis and expertly deployed language.
Andrew Benson Brown has just posted an extract here from his verse epic on the American Revolution. Some of the material in it is completely false, historically speaking. But his epic is still wonderful because he has used his imagination to conjure up things unheard of, but compelling and exciting. What about the thousands of fairy tales in poetry, and myths, and Beowulf fighting the dragon, and the talking horses of Achilles, or the magical scenes in Gerusalemme Liberata and the Ramayana,, and half the damned plays of Shakespeare?
Demanding “truth” in poetry is the preliminary step to demanding censorship of that which is “untrue.”
My sense is that Mr. Whidden is referring to rendering characters and ideas realistically and not making them too simplistic, flat, or undeveloped. The characters or ideas themselves may be entirely fictive. Correct me if I’m wrong, Phillip.
Thank you, Evan Mantyk. You are exactly correct. I was in essence attacking any writing that misrepresents the truth about human nature, such as sentimental love stories and stories that teach that males are interesting only, for instance, when they are action adventure heroes.
Thank you, Roy Eugene Peterson, for your thoughtful reply. I only just now saw it. Sorry. I don’t think the sonnet said that great writing should stick only to factual truth.
Thank you for your serious thoughts, Joseph S. Salemi. I do not think that the sonnet said great writing comes only from factual truth.
I’ve been toying with writing an old-style hero poem, yet fear it will sound satirical to the modern ear.
A lot to digest and ponder from your poem, Phillip.
Thank you, Paul A. Freeman. I only just now saw your comment. Old-style or new what is needed is the truth about human nature. Even if the hero (etc.) is a god, or born of a god and human, or whatever, what matters is if the writing tells the truth about human nature. I think that most people, 21st century or otherwise, think that the Iliad tells truths about human nature. Satirists do it generally by pointing out human flaws and ignoring human strengths. The tool results in truth.
Phillip, to expand upon the message of your “The First and Usually Unspoken Rule of Great Writing” poem, is to remind us that each word itself originates from a truth.
The etymological root of a word is not merely its origin, as some of have argued, because the etymological root of the word “etymology” itself means “true”.
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From the Webster-Merriam dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/etymological#did-you-know
“The etymology of etymology itself is relatively straightforward. Etymon means “origin of a word” in Latin, and comes from the Greek word etymon, meaning “literal meaning of a word according to its origin.” Greek etymon in turn comes from etymos, which means “true.””
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Thus, the truest meaning of any word is its origin or etymological root.
One of the many fog of war deceptions employed by the Left supremacists, is for them to pretend that the original meaning of any word, and thus its origin, is equal to its additional meanings that formed over the centuries, and thus whereby its original meaning can be made archaic and then obsolete, and therefore censored and canceled.
We are living in a day and age where the Left supremacists have falsely accused the English language of being inherently racist, sexist, and every thing else under the eclipsed sun. It is the goal of those willfully illiterate idiot nitwits to falsely redefine words for the nihilistic anti-reason of rendering them meaningless, until an entire generation has become as mute as the humans in the original Planet of the Apes movie.
In reality, for any additional meaning of a word to be valid, it must not negate the true meaning of that word, otherwise that additional meaning is a lie, as much as every act of historical revisionism is a lie.
Thank you Phillip, for your poem having helped to remind us about the truthful use of words.
From Lannie.
Thank you, Lannie David Brockstein, for your thoughts. I just now saw them. “Every word was once a poem.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whilst I admire Philip’s sentiments, I have to agree with Joe. Poetry is fiction, and as soon as you say that, you are on the back foot in terms of persuading anybody that it should be true; though, of course, as GK Chesterton observed, The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible.
Thank you, James Sale, for your pertinent comment. Are you saying that the poetry parts of the Bible are fiction? Of course fiction does not have to be credible in the sense of factual truth. I like Chesterton almost always. He wryly observes in this particular instance that the truth is stranger than fiction, but just says it in his own clever way. His biography of Saint Francis of Assisi is my favorite version of that life, but not because it is about reality (since I do not know what the reality was) but because it is about truth.