Poetic Performance

I'm aware that for most people, the word poetry conjures up images of pretentiousness, poseurs, unwarranted self-importance, and berets. The stereotype of the incomprehensible hipster poet has to come from somewhere, but dismissing poetry on general principle is not wise.

I'm the first to admit that I'm crap at poetry, but I keep trying my hand at it anyway. I've harped before on how important I think it is for magicians to learn writing, so I have to walk my talk. Poetry is compressed prose and requires a real gift for language. It's a separate challenge from writing prose however as it requires a very different use of your language skills.

Now, I'm not asking you all to compose Shakespearean sonnets about David Blaine. However, knowing a bit about poetry is good for you when writing scripts for your effects. Let me give you an example.

Let's take two words and compare them. Conclude and terminate. They both mean to stop doing something, but they have slight differences in meaning and we have different associations with them. Conclude has a certain positive note to it. That a task has finally reached its point of completion. There's a sense of closure we feel when we use the word. But terminate has a sound of severity to it. Finality, even negativity seems conjured up. We even associate it with mortality.

This is a major element of poetry. The color and tone of your words is more important than the inherent meaning. In a performance, you can rarely get away with using anachronistic language. You'll rarely find an opportunity to use the word vespertine. And it's unlikely you'll come across a time where noisome is a better word to use than foul, noxious, unhealthy, or offensive. But you might think of a time where unsafe is a better, less severe word than dangerous. Or, when it comes to phrases, a time when you think, "Enjoy yourself," has better subtext than, "Lighten up."

In literature, there is actually a phrase to describe writing that abuses the thesaurus, inappropriately uses anachronistic language, and goes overboard on descriptions: purple prose. The phrase comes from the Roman poet Horace who made reference to "flashy purple patches" as an inappropriate addition to a poem. This comes from ancient clothing traditions. Dying one's clothes naturally cost money. And purple dye was the most expensive of all, typically worn only by the wealthy elite and the ruling class. Those with pretentions toward class however would take the purple scraps of fabric the tailors cast off and sew them to their own garments in an attempt to affect a look of affluence beyond their station. Purple prose then is lurid, overblown language that tries to make the passage more evocative and sensual, but instead breaks flow and ends up calling attention to itself. Now imagine that kind of writing being spoken out loud.

Since you don't want to just manhandle your thesaurus, you can also pepper your sentences with various grammatical and rhetorical constructs. Allude to ideas, imply them rather than tell. A well-placed alliterative can stick out in the mind, and was a technique FDR was fond of in his rhetoric. Rhymes are harder to use outside of poetry, but if you're up for a challenge why not try assonance instead? A little goes a long way, so use this stuff sparingly and with purpose.

The main thing you need to remember is that poetry has to sensually convey a message within its limitations. You have to evoke through language. As performers, we have the added benefit but also the challenge of nonverbal communication. Your body language and vocal tone will combine with the words to make or break the associations and subtext you're trying to create. I'll discuss this in more detail in a future post about how to build up a lexicon for your performances.