ProetryPlace Blog 9: Of Rules, Tools and Fools

what you know can’t hurt

but it sure can inhibit—

conventional  truths

    My wife thinks I ask too many questions. Sometimes after she has passed on a bit of news she has just learned she will add, “Don’t ask me any questions. That’s all I know,” attempting to ward off the inevitable query. She sees it as a threat or a challenge, I suppose.

    If it is a challenge it is to the veracity of the news item, not hers personally. Usually, I am merely induced by curiosity to learn more, though that may include questioning the truth, background or motivations underlying the story.

    Or she may complain of another, perhaps related, tiny fault—her view, not mine. Maybe just a sideways glance or shrug, or she may say something like, “You think the rules are made just for others, don’t you!”

    I do not really. I don’t mess with the rules of nature. Can’t of course. They are immutable. Never tried to fly off the rim of the Grand Canyon, for example, by furiously flapping my arms.  Gravity trumps kinetic energy. But when it comes to the edicts and laws of mankind, I will admit to taking occasional liberties.

    Our regulations do not have the universal applicability that Mother Nature’s do. Being man-made, they are not exempt from being, at times, completely foolish and at other times quite useful. Following them strictly may save one from the trouble of exercising one’s judgment or possibly a $200 ticket for speeding happily along on an open highway. Still, I am often compelled to both question and challenge the logic, truth or applicability of some “laws.”

    Invention, progress and development do not occur without such challenge, whatever the field of human endeavor. As a research scientist, my discoveries and inventions always started with a question, e.g. What if? Then followed one or more experiments to test alternatives to the conventional wisdom. And in the end, new knowledge, new understanding or a new way of manipulating natural law built on the skill and understanding of those who had gone before.

    I have a similar view of writing prose and poetry. Someone, sometime wrote the first villanelle or sonnet, haiku or free verse, breaking existing rules, creating something new—the product of inexhaustible human ingenuity. After studying such forms for basic conventions of rhyme and tools of construction and considering how they might enhance poetic expression, I invariably feel a need to bend the rules and experiment on my own.

    It is not unusual to find that others have beaten me to the punch, written haiku in a single line or two instead of the usual three, or rhymed a line of blank verse or scrambled the meter from iambic pentameter. I can enjoy these infractions only because I recognize that they are deviations and innovations and the poetry police have let them pass with just a warning ticket or even a pat on the back.

conventional truths

dogma, science or writing—

now leap off the rim

Richard Allen Anderson     < ; - )     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com