A Theory of Expression (back to
Is Poems)
Living, as a human being, is the process of making and expressing meaning. Writing
is one of the best tools we have for making meaning. Meaning is a useful understanding
of the way the world works—an understanding that allows us to predict or
affect the behavior of objects and persons in our world. An understanding is
a recognizable, relatively stable, reoccurring pattern that encompasses or captures
the relationships between events, ideas, or people.
To make meaning we have to be able to observe and select appropriate details, observe or make connections between selected details and between those and others already in our possession (in memory), draw conclusions or inferences based on that whole set of connections (that is, recognize and evaluate any apparent patterns, or create the patterns out of our own experience or sense of creativity, or fit the new details into existing patterns stored in memory), and, finally, test our conclusions to see if they enrich our understanding of how the world works or enable us to better predict/affect the behavior of objects/people in our world. Another way of saying this is that we are continually in the process of “making sense” of the world around us.
To express meaning we have to find what Ezra Pound called objective
correlates for the pattern of connection and inference we hold inside. We have
to select appropriate details, telling details, from observational reality or
shared experience and arrange them in a way which will enable others to construct
the meaning we are trying to express. We have a large group of observational
details to draw on, already expressed in a shared code—words—vocabulary
that names objects, actions, thoughts, feelings, and relationships. Words work,
in our brains, like an index in a book, or a key-word in a data base of stored
information. When someone says the word “dog” or we read it in print,
it calls up, more or less efficiently, depending on the individual, the whole
host of memories associated with dog in our minds—personal experience,
particular dogs, photographs we have seen, things we have read, things people
have told us. Most of the time the word evokes a kind of generic image of an
medium sized, relatively hairy, animal, which is, depending on our feelings
about dogs, either friendly or threatening (the wagging tail and thirsty eyes,
or the bark and bared fangs). We may “see,” (with our inner eye) rapidly,
a series of little snapshots of dogs we have know, or, more likely, if we own
or have owned a dog, one particular dog. We may be carried from specific dogs
to the whole idea of “doggyness,” including what we know about domestication
and wolves. However, any word contains only a limited and very general amount
of agreed meaning (words are, and must be, by nature, very imprecise). In order
to say more exactly what we mean we have to arrange our words in groups which
describe larger, richer, more specific and complex chunks of experience. We
modify the primary names using a set of words developed for that purpose (adjectives
and adverbs). Big dog. Brown dog. Friendly dog. Drooling dog. Big brown friendly
drooling dog. Modifiers are awkward and only marginally effective. No string
of modifiers will ever get us to exact thing—and the longer the string
of modifiers gets the harder it is for the reader/hearer to hold it in mind
and make meaning of it. Also, while modifiers have their use in describing physical
objects and actions, they are of limited value when we want to express the “inner
essence” or the “perceived nature” of things or people.
Modified names can not express complex meanings. A better way
is to use simile, metaphor, image—clusters of words which describe by working
on the patterns of association and meaning that already exist in our listener/reader’s
minds. Simile and metaphor work by asking the reader or listener to do a mental
comparison between the object or action being named, and some thing else already
in memory. An image is an extended metaphor, a word painting, a little scrip
which we turn into a movie in our heads. It conveys meaning by taking the reader/listener
into the “experience,” and by letting the reader/listener build his
or her own patterns form the objects and actions named. A skillful communicator
can convey very complex meanings without ever naming them at all. A skillful
communicator plays on the memories and associations already in the reader/listener’s
mind as though the mind itself were an instrument. We build meaning from words—but
we build meaning most effectively by building a virtual context, an image in
our reader/listener’s minds, in which the associations and relationships—the
patterns—are already apparent, or where we hope, at least, that others
will not be able to miss them.
Not: “love.” Not: “they were very much in love.”
Not even: “their love was like a warm comforter.” (though that is
getting there).
“They had this warm, and well-worn comforter between them.
At day’s end they drew it over each other, tenderly tucking in the edges
against the cold world of work and service. You would catch them, after supper,
whispering under it, children again, making little tents and tunnels as their
hidden hands reached out to touch each other, as they found space for knees
and elbows together. You were always tempted to look away from them. You got
the feeling that under that comforter, they were not wearing any clothes at
all.”
We work from general to specific: generic name (dog), then
either modified name (small brown and white dog) or specific name (beagle).
The impulse to modify is stronger than the impulse to the specific, despite
the fact that specific names are more effective. A skilled writer overcomes
the impulse to modify as often as a specific word is available. We use comparison
when we want to make sure the reader or listener is imaging something very like
what we have in mind. The movement to image is forced only when the meaning
becomes too complex to name effectively.
An advantage of the image is that the individual words don’t
have to be very specific—often any dog, any comforter, the reader/hearer
plugs in will do, as long as the dog fills the dog space in the image, as long
as the comforter is one the reader/listener can see and feel. Image is also
the most efficient means of transferring meaning, since whole complexes are
transferred rather than individual details.
The process of communication involves naming, modified naming,
description by comparison, and imaging. Naming works to communicate simple meanings.
Modified naming works when the meaning is only slightly more complex or specific,
but description by comparison is the most effective way of conveying the object
or action to another mind. Imaging is necessary to express complex meaning,
especially to express non-objective meanings (thoughts, feelings, impressions,
etc.)
Once we discover the power of the image, many of us delight in it and jump right to that level of communication (we are liable to be called poets—whether we deserve the name or not).