O my Luve’s like a red, red, rose. -Robert Burns
Strunk & White: Eschew needless words!
My Love is not concise. My Love gushes and ebbs, glows and cools, quakes and congeals. My Love’s eyes are not practical lenses that filter and absorb light to capture a photographic, exact record of The Real World. No, his eyes are lush root-beer springs that bubble down to calm, black cenotes, sinkholes into a holy wild hot wet.
Their shores are divided by a broad and cavernous nose, its windy depths swirling, holding, tasting, remembering the bouquet of messages evaporating from my neck, my hair, my breasts.
His lips are extravagant and majestic rounded mountains, home to many a vagabond question, his curved ridges perches for many a fluttering tune, his moist riverbanks cooling warm winds into foggy baroque morsels of wonder. Impossible corners sharpen into slow delight, then widen flat when laughter erupts.
His wide chin jokes and boasts, his pride the strength and butt of both. A modest forest shades what’s shy when the weather cools and his eyes search into his heart, below.
Far above, two bushy hills shelter his thoughtful pools, rolling away into a great continental prairie of Sun-, wind-, and rain-loving plains, basking in what the Sky bequeaths.
O. my Luve. Red. Red. Rose. O.
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In the invented words of Shakespeare, who not only would not eschew, but found need to invent yet more, I invent a protest for orphaned, “needless” words:
Pander not to academe, who would have you undress and torture our lustrous and generous champion of courtship, til our majestic gusts of blushing moonbeam dwindle and grovel into the lackluster, frugal, and lonely gossip of skim milk.
Just sayin, don’t forget to take a look at rap, and hip-hop. I used to hate it, but it is an historically interesting narrative of Spoken Word. Overall, I’d say, don’t let music become background, a kind of auditory wallpaper. There’s too much there to just ignore.
Absolutely love this! I know readers in this age have the attention span for a paragraph or two. “Concise, please. I’m late for my next info dump.” And oh, how I abhor casting off the jeweled descriptions that place luxuriant robes upon the bleached bones of my stories. Thank you for giving my orphans a home.
Thank you Suzanne, for your kind corroboration of my florid tastes. I have enjoyed reading through your blog. My initial, made-up major in college was technical writing (because I was already doing it anyway at work) so it’s fun to read through the adventures of someone who did what I meant to do but didn’t get distracted by a silly music degree, which I did. And who can play the organ, besides, which I can’t! You’re in my reader now.
But Anne! Know you not that music is the language of the soul, that it heals and soothes, that it is never a distraction but a blessing? Unless it is rap, then all bets are off.