In Competition No. 2608 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of adjectives. While the inspiration for last week’s challenge was a verb-hating French doctor of letters, this time around you can blame Ezra Pound. In The Spirit of Romance he states, ‘The true poet is most easily distinguished from the false, when he trusts himself to the simplest expression, and when he writes without adjectives.’
The entry was a spirited and magnificently unPoundian celebration of this oft-maligned part of speech. Commendations to Martin Parker and Melissa Balmain. They were narrowly squeezed out by the winners, below, who are rewarded with £30 apiece. The bonus fiver goes to Bill Greenwell.
No noun (or pronoun) would go down as great
If neglected by adjectives, stripped of their garnish:
If you can’t cadge an adj. to provide you some varnish,
Your prose will lack punch, and be plain as a plate.
Simenon claimed you should winkle them out,
But Maigret’s a dull dog, neither style nor panache:
Dour and powerless, under the lash,
Maigret needs adjectives — of that there’s no doubt.
Decorative, eloquent, demented, splenetic —
Whether crouched between commas or bunched up or clustered —
Where adjectives gather, the language cuts mustard:
Nouns leave the ground, energetic, balletic.
Verbs may have verve, but an adjective’s hammer
Produces the sparks from the writerly anvil:
Try Barker (the one who begins Harley Granville-),
And revel at once in the glamour of grammar.
Bill Greenwell
And what made England’s mountains ‘green’ or April showers ‘sweet’?
The adjective! It crowns the noun and renders it complete!
How dull Limpopo’s banks would seem had Kipling not been keen
To turn them ‘greasy’, make them ‘great’ and colour them ‘grey-green’.
A ‘pea-green’ boat, as Lear made clear, is more than just a boat
And any note, to be of note, should be a ‘five-pound’ note.
Nursery rhymes, for children, serve as adjective providers
With ‘silver’ nutmegs, ‘pretty’ maids and ‘incy wincy’ spiders.
To Wordsworth for a single word the world is now beholden,
His daffodils dance all the more for being painted ‘golden’.
There’s Swift (whose name’s an adjective) with ever ‘smaller’ fleas
And Shelley’s wondrous ‘wild west’ wind and Masefield’s ‘lonely’ seas.
Our blessed isle is ‘scepter’d’ thanks to Shakespeare’s wit and will
In crafting clever adjectives which aptly fit the bill.
None should frown upon the noun though never can it live
Without that polished, priceless, peerless, perfect adjective.
Alan Millard
Oh festive board, oh shitty dog, and noisome cat, my cunning tongue
is slippery, pleased to loudly laugh at spritely beasts, bright arbours hung
with vivid blossoms, heavy dropped on drowsy pates of lazy loons
who idly wait for fragrant plates of pungent broths, clean silver spoons
raised to the blazing golden sun that shyly shines through heavy vines
with prickly caterpillars clung, and loud with stripey insect whines.
Below merlot glows redly through clear glass to swiftly steal slow wits,
so shitty dog and noisome cat are eager gobblers, the best bits
of gourmet-fare are largely scoffed by furtive beasts, while tipsy fools
oblivious and garrulous, are stupid, as grimalkin drools
and hairy Kaspar’s ancient skills demolish golden poultry roasts
before their sightless eyes, and pies, fruit-laden, crash, as drunken toasts
grow louder as besotted hosts and silly guests and louts carouse,
neglected birthday candles catch rogue winds and burn the fetid house.
Janet Kenny
There’s nothing like an adjective to qualify a noun.
It’s wholly fit for purpose, so to speak.
Applied to friends and family it serves to put them down:
Naive, psychotic, boring, idle, weak.
All book reviewers understand descriptives must draw blood
Equivalent to shrapnel wounds or worse.
An epithet-attack can mean the author’s name is mud:
Flat, turgid, unoriginal, perverse.
In mating language adjectives need never be sincere.
They’re prompts from the Pavlovian mother-board.
What pays is using clichés smitten lovers love to hear:
Exciting, gorgeous, wonderful, adored.
Some adjectives are fresh and lively, some are off the shelf,
But all are praiseworthy, even the oddest.
I have a private store I like applying to myself:
Successful, handsome, talented, wise, modest.
Basil Ransome-Davies
What is this life if, full of care,
Our staple fayre is doing-words?
Begone the sounds of verbs and nouns!
We need a spirit that resounds
To woo-ing words, imbuing words,
True-y, bluey gooey words
And I’m-in-love-with-you-ey words.
The parts of speech that melt cold hearts
Aren’t articles or names of parts:
Was Burns’s beastie just a mouse?
So Wuthering Heights was just a house?
Is Stevie Gerrard just a Scouse?
No! Push the boat out (verbally)
In glorious hyperbole!
An ode to adjectives? You bet —
Let’s hear it for the epithet!
David Silverman
No. 2611: Holding fourth
You are invited to provide a poem to be recited on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square (16 lines maximum). Entries to Competition 2611 by midday on 26 August or email lucy@spectator.co.uk
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