Life in the Cereal Aisle

the poetic line

 

I want to posit a question. Or posit an idea that in itself presents a question. Perhaps many questions. It depends on how seriously you take the idea of the poetic ear.

Take this phrase that I have been playing around with (unfortunately to little fruition):

time well spent in the cereal aisle

Except, that's not the phrase I'm playing with. This is:

time spent well in the cereal aisle

There is a world of difference between those two phrases, entirely because of how they work on the ear. The latter has an aural resonance that is wholly lacking in the former. Why? What am I talking about? Break it down:

time spent well in the cereal aisle spent well ------- cereal aisle speh / ell ---------- see / ayl seh / ell ----------- see / ayl

So that you can read it without going back up, and hear what is going on:

time well spent in the cereal aisle

vs.

time spent well in the cereal aisle

Do you hear the aural construction that is created by reversing the order of "well spent"? It is totally lacking in the more common way of saying it. And there is nothing grammatically or semantically incorrect with reversing the words. In fact, in normal construction, the adverb as often follows the verb as precedes it. For example:

laughed heartily heartily laughed

It just happens to be that we most normally fall upon "well spent." (I would be willing to argue it is because in English we tend to like our stops at the end of the phrase rather than having them in the middle of things.)

But what I am positing is not just the presence of the sound. Ultimately, decisively, what I am saying is that this:

time spent well in the cereal aisle

is poetic, while this:

time well spent in the cereal aisle

is merely prosaic. And that if you are writing verse, the momentum should be to the use of the former. That when writing verse, you should be seeking such sound constructions. That when writing verse, how the line sounds (or lines) is actually quite important to its poetic strength.

Now, some people would argue that you are supposed to use common speech nowadays in verse. I say that that is why so few so-called "poets" have any sense of a poetic ear, and why so very much verse you see about is aurally bland, boring, and often unmelodious if not clunky. (There is a lot of clunky verse out there, and you would think editors of magazines would know better. Would hear better.) Poetry is supposed to be making something out of language, something that does not normally exist but for the poet's careful creating. Something, dare we say, beautiful. And, very simply,

time spent well in the cereal aisle

has beauty, and

time well spent in the cereal aisle

does not.