Play with English Grammar

One of the skills that a poet must learn is the ability to play with English grammar. The rules are sometimes quite strict, but the art of poetry is the ability to manipulate language to create unexpected yet pleasing results. When one can play with English grammar and move words into unusual positions, one can produce the types of effects that give lust to poetry. Of this, Shakespeare was a master. His most famous lines frequently invert grammatical convention. Where we might today say “The question is whether to be,” Shakespeare instead writes “To be or not to be, that is the question.” By inverting the normal order, the phrase sticks in one’s mind more easily than other word orders might.

Other poets have made much more of the ability to play with English grammar. The poet e. e. cummings cut up and fractured words and phrases to produce jarring results, and T. S. Elliot used bits and pieces of quotations and phrases to give luster to “The Waste-Land.” All in all, the more a poet is able to play with English grammar, the more memorable a poem will be. This, of course, isn’t always a good thing. Some of the worst poems ever written also try to play with English grammar but produce results that are almost unreadable. The art of the matter is trying to produce interesting phrases that are both beautiful and meaningful.

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