Please Help Me Fine-Tune My Poem

Today's thought(s) came in the form of a poem. I've dabbled in poetry in the past, but it is still an elusive beast that I struggle with. I enjoy it, but as my dad sometimes says (and he may be quoting somebody, but I'm paraphrasing), poetry can be a lot of pretentious nonsense.

So, here's my pretense. To me it isn't nonsense, though, so if you have thoughts or constructive criticisms for better conveying my sentiments, I would welcome them. As well as any suggestions for a title.

"Go to sleep."

"Go to sleep," I said
"so that your body can rest and grow big
and tall and be healthy
and strong."

"Oh!"

And her eyes light up. Eyes reflecting
the joys of life, back
and forth so many times that I'm awed
to stand at the center and find that the source of all this happiness
is right here before me.

"Oh!" she says,
"I sleep, I wake up, and I be big and strong
and big like you, mama?
I sleep!"

And I laugh because science says that even now, at this peak
of growth, she only adds four inches a year, which works out to be .01 (repeating forever) inches a day.
A change which would still be imperceptible to either of our eyes.

But I pause at the door

Because last night, I kissed a baby girl, tucked her in, and told her to
"Go to sleep."

This morning, that same girl leapt from her bed, spoke in full sentences,
and awakened me.

No more sleep.

Caution: Dangling Participles Ahead

I'm a bit of an English language . . . nerd? Enthusiast? Grammar Nazi? No, definitely not that last one—I tend to be a bit of a Laissez-faire Englicist. (As evidenced by my propensity to use words that are not actually words. Like Englicist.) I currently have at least three dictionary tabs open in my web browser. That being said, you probably won't be as excited about the following entry as I am. But if you are, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Public service announcement: I feel I ought to tell you that I've just discovered what a participle is and how it can be “dangled.” For many years now, I've heard people berate the dangling of participles, and I've never known what it is or how to do it. Fear no more. I will now educate you on the mysterious art of participle dangling.

Let's talk first about misplaced modifiers. (Keep calm, guys, this is going to be FUN.) Modifiers are words, phrases, or parts of a sentence that give us further information or description of another word, phrase, or part of the same sentence. This can help narrow things so that we better understand what the writer meant by the original word. SO, when we talk about misplaced modifiers, the word “misplaced” is modifying “modifiers.” Thanks to this word, we know what kind of modifiers we are specifically discussing—the misplaced ones. These modifiers can cause some confusion and sound awkward because instead of being placed near the phrase they are modifying, they make it look like they are modifying a different piece of the sentence. Observe.

Green and warty, the people saw the frog as disgusting.

Now, see what happened? You read the first portion of the sentence and thought I must be writing about wicked witches. Only after you finished reading did you realize I was instead writing about a green and warty frog. This could be avoided if I were to move the modifying phrase so that it reads

The people saw the green and warty frog as disgusting.

This eliminates any confusion over who is green and warty.

So, these dang participles—I mean, dangling participles—that I was talking about before all of this are a specific type of misplaced modifier. (For you logicians reading this: all dangling participles are misplaced modifiers, but not all misplaced modifiers are dangling participles. By the way, if I'm wrong, I'll admit that I always lie.) Anyway, participles are words that we would normally recognize as verbs acting instead as an adjective. An example of this would be a plunging neckline. Plunging is totally something that we could do—which, as we learned in our early language classes, is what makes a verb. However, in this case it's not a verb, but an adjective. What sort of neckline is it? A plunging one.

Dangling participles are participial phrases that are placed in such a way that it leaves you hanging, so to speak, and wondering what exactly is happening in the sentence.

Burned and disfigured, I looked at my cookies.

Am I the one who is burned and disfigured, or would that be my cookies? Well, given my history in the kitchen, it very well could be either. But let's pretend that my intent was to describe the cookies. In that case we can wave our magic revision wands and instead get

I looked at my burned and disfigured cookies and cried because I had once again failed in the kitchen.

(That last part wasn't a critical part of the revision, but I thought it might help me more clearly communicate the situation.) What I'm trying to show you is that by moving the participle, we have clarified what could have been a concerning statement. We can all breathe a bit easier—especially me—at knowing that I haven't suffered a horrific kitchen accident.

Because some dangling participles can be easily interpreted, such as Jumping into a lake, my article informed me, is a good thing to do when being chased by bees. Jumping beans, maybe, but articles? Hardly. Therefore, we automatically interpret the sentence correctly because the alternative is so improbable. For this reason, dangling participles have become somewhat accepted by all but a small group of grammar gurus who continue to insist on their un-dangling. Despite this traditional battle, the participle dangling continues to grow in popularity, especially among tour guides.

Looking off to the right, a blogger can be seen boring her audience by babbling on about obscure English concepts . . .

Oops, I Did It Again: In Which I Confess That I'm a Blockhead

So, this week, in addition to having a baby to care for, laundry to do, a house to clean, and sickness, I also had writer's block. (For those of you who really wanted to know the inner happenings of my life. For the rest of you, sorry, but the solution seems obvious: don't read my blog if you don't want to know.)

See, the thing about my writing is that I've always written when I wanted to and not when I didn't want to. If I don't have something I want to say, I struggle with coming up with a topic and feel guilty the whole time I'm writing because I know that the attempt I'm giving is mediocre at best. My heart just isn't in it. To solve this, I don't usually talk when I don't have anything to say and I don't usually write when I don't have any ideas. It's both good and bad.

In high school I used it as a wonderful excuse. My English teacher: “Do NOT put this assignment off. You'll be sorry if you do.” Me: “It's cool. I'll just wait for inspiration to strike me and then I'll be done in half the time.” And it typically worked out okay (most often in the wee hours before the assignment was due), except that it reinforced my awful habit of procrastinating.

That's not what real writers do, that's the approach of someone who occasionally writes. I've been cheating my way through; this is the exact reason that I started a blog—I wanted something to hold me accountable and keep me writing, even when I didn't have the words bursting out of me.

I find it interesting that my lack of ideas coincides with my sister-in-law's offer to let us use her Netflix account. I thought I was doing all right. I mean, I haven't sat down to waste entire days watching entire shows (yet!). What I've found, though, is that increased TV time seems to be robbing me of more than just time. In moments when I would normally be pondering odd thoughts like “Where does the phrase 'I trust you implicitly come from? Is it possible to trust someone 'explicitly'?” (which questions, by the way, were resolved through a simple dictionary search), I'm instead wondering “On whose side is Mulder's informant, and will he be in the next episode of X-Files?” I'm still undecided, but it seems the only way to get to the bottom of this is to continue watching and see if I can come up with any ideas and prove my hypothesis wrong. Who knows? Maybe this question is unanswerable.