Prompt #316 - Aposiopesis - By Guest Blogger Joe Weil

 

Aposiopesis means becoming silent, but as a rhetorical device it implies tripping over your own words, cutting yourself off, halting the flow—the speaker being cut off either by the self, or by someone else. It happens far more in normal human speech than we'd think, and to master it can make you a better writer of scripts, but here, we are going to use it to make a poem: This is called “I Tried To.”

Example:

I Tried to

I tried to—oh damn
this is—
I tried to—you know
call?
And then I thought
forget about it. I mean
it shouldn't be this—
Jesus do you always
have to chew
while I—
anyway—
I'm sorry but it's like
you got
some small
planet
in your cheek!
Anyway, I tried. I—
Jesus! Listen! I'm doing
the best I can.
You're impossible.
This is impossible.
Yes, everything's ok Mam, and
no ... no desert. Do you?
No?
You can just bring the check.

Here, Aposiopesis creates the rhythm of halting speech, and it even implies the setting: two people seem to be sitting down to a meal. One never speaks. A third enters at the end, probably the waitress, and we never hear her question, but we can guess. We know the speaker is troubled, and annoyed by the other's “chewing.” The Aposiopesis creates a nice little shape to the poem as well. This is one of the possibilities for using an ancient rhetorical device in a free verse structure. Give it a shot.

Similar verbal phenomena to look up: non-sequitur, sentence fragments.

Poets who have used methods of Aposiopesis: Shakespeare in King Lear (and in other plays), Robert Creeley (in some respects, Creeley made an aesthetic out of it), Paul Celan in many of his poems that fragmented the German language. Many post modern poets, and poets in the modified New York school of poetry in Brooklyn use radical non-sequitur to create either surreal disconnects or a voice that is seemingly “ditzy.” You can hear this sort of feigned “ditzy” in many poets, but also in Indy scripts with “pixie” types—that so called “dream” girl who, in an earlier manifestation, was played to perfection by Carole Lombard and Jean Arthur in screwball comedies. Going from one thing to another can be construed as a kind of Aposiopesis.

Guidelines:

1. In your poem, use aposiopesis by breaking off abruptly and leaving statements incomplete; that is, leave a sentence unfinished, so that the reader can determine his or her own meanings.

2. Use the example above to create a form/format for your own poem.

3. Sometimes a word is used to indicate something completely different from its literal meaning. Such as in this example, “Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse; that is, one may reach deep enough, and find little” (Timon of Athens, by William Shakespeare).

   

4. Sometimes a word is used to indicate something whose actual name is not used like, “A chair’s arm.”

   

5. Sometimes a paradoxical statement is used to create illogical strained metaphors. Such as, “Take arms against a sea of troubles.”

6. To create surprise, aposiopesis does not give information that the audience wants or expects to receive. This generates audience interest in the information.

7. Emotive aposiopesis does not finish a sentence due to an emotional outburst. This type of aposiopesis does not finish an idea to give a sense of something that’s beyond description, as in the case of an angry man who is so furious that he can’t even think of what he wants to do to express that anger. Example: If I catch up with you, I’ll, I’ll  – (the thought is left incomplete).

8. Abusio is a subtype of Aposiopesis, which results from the combination of two metaphors.

Tips:

1. Try to stay away from long lines, remember that abrupt cut-offs are typical of Aposiopesis.

2. Remember, too, that the most effective Aposiopesis happens when the reader is able to figure out the thoughts that the poet has left unfinished.

3. Stay “conversational” without telling too much.

 ___________________________________________________

Many thanks to Joe Weil for this prompt!

 

Joe Weil is a professor teaching undergraduate and graduate creative writing at Binghamton University (SUNY). He has published numerous chapbooks and four full-length collections of poems, including A Night in Duluth, The Great Grandmother Light, and The Plumber’s Apprentice, all from NYQ Books. He also co-authored West of Home, with his wife, the poet Emily Vogel. Joe and Emily have two children, Clare and Gabriel.

A long-time poet with the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program, Joe Weil’s poems, reviews, essays and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. He appeared on Bill Moyers’ PBS documentary, “Fooling with Words,” and, in addition to teaching for the Dodge Foundation, he has been a featured reader at the Dodge Poetry Festival. With a long list of reading series and poetry events to his credit (including the Can Of Corn Poetry Series designed to generate food donations for the hungry and homeless), Joe has worked tirelessly to create non-competitive community among poets. The New York Times described him as “working-class, irreverent, modest, but open to the world and filled with a wealth of possibilities.”

Meet Joe Weil: https://www.pbs.org/video/state-of-the-arts-joe-weil-poet/

Order Joe’s Books: https://books.nyq.org/author/joeweil