Hi, this is Michael Jackman, senior lecturer in writing at Indiana University Southeast, and this podcast is called Language is a Liquid. There's a way to think about language that's essential to writing better, especially when writing poetry. This podcast is going to explain the best way for poets to think about language. I want you to imagine a rock. Close your eyes. Notice that the rock is solid. Its shape is permanent. It's fixed in one spot. It does not move. You can take all of it in with one glance. It's silent. It does not speak. Now imagine a stream. It stretches all the way from one side of your vision beyond the other side. You can't take all of it in at once. In the stream, water flows continuously. It makes sounds. It bubbles, tinkles, gurgles, splashes. Where there are rapids, it even roars. It flows. It speaks. Here's the all-important way for poets to think about language. Language is a liquid. Well, if your eyes are still closed, go ahead and open them. Let me explain why this is important and how you probably lost touch with this idea. When you first learned to speak, language was all about sound. It was only when you began to learn to read that you saw words on a page. And the more that printed words became your focus, the more that reading and writing took over your learning, the more your eyes replaced your ears. The gift of literacy is that language became more permanent, more like a rock than a liquid. But for the poet that's also literacy's curse. Gradually, we've learned to think of words as objects. They consisted of shapes on a page or a screen. We lost the knack of paying attention to their sounds and their flow so that language hardly speaks to us anymore. Through literacy and through education, words have become rocks. But that's not what the printed word is meant to be. It's meant to be like a sheet of music. English, just like other alphabetic written languages, is a system for notating sounds similar to musical notation. Oh, it's a highly imperfect system, especially how modern English orthography evolved. But nevertheless, when we put letters together to spell words on a page or a screen from left to right, we are notating sounds in the order of their flow, the sounds of the English language. But when we learned to pay more attention to the form and shape of the words than to the sounds they make, we became detached from the music of English. We lost the ability to compose this music because we no longer hear the liquid river of language. To help you remember how language flows like a stream, let's consider the simple word because the word is three parts. It begins with a small explosion. But then it explodes again, a little louder with a sound like a crow makes, car. Then it sizzles and goes out with either a soft S sound or if you pronounce it differently, a little buzz, Zzzz, because, because. So, like a liquid, it flows downstream. It makes waves. It makes different noises as it passes. Also like a stream, you don't know where it's going until you ride the current and get there. It has suspense in other words, the suspense of anticipation. You don't know what a word is until it's over. First, when you hear B, your brain doesn't know whether the word will end up as B or something else. When you get to the second consonant, your brain doesn't know if the word will be B or B or B or B again or something else. It's only when the word finally sizzles out and goes silent that your brain can tell because. So when your ears words flow, they speak. They have suspense. They make a melody on the page a word is just an object. It's a rock. This is by the way, the reason that poets need to read aloud when they compose, when they appreciate poetry written by others also. The words need to be in your ears not in front of your eyes. The words need to flow like a stream. The water needs to sing to you. I'm going to read a poem and I want you to listen to it with your ears and not your eyes. I want you to flow along with its currents and hear its song, the music the words make. They've just made love in a clearing in the woods. She doses lightly, naked on the flattened, fragrant grass. Orpheus rises. He's restless. The way she lies there, it's as if she's already dead. A sight he can't bear. And so without knowing it, he chooses loss the one sure song. She wakes in time to see him turn away and enter the dark tunnel of trees, humming a tune he'll soon put words to. That's orpheus and you're a DJ by Gregory Orr. If you can hear the music of the words, you can hear the way the lines flow like a current taking you down the poem. You can hear the way different words are connected by the sounds they make. Flattened, fragrant grass with the repetition of F's, G's and R's. Flattened, fragrant grass with two little bumps of two syllables each, followed by one little bump of just one syllable. The use of variations of the syllable A in flattened, fragrant grass. Or the use of different harder sounds as the poem turns darker, the T sounds of to see him turn away and enter the dark tunnel of trees. This poem by Gregory Orr is singing to you. It's composed to be heard, not seen, to flow like a liquid, not sit there silent like a rock. That's why it's called lyric poetry because the words sing a song to the mind through the ears, not through the eyes. So when you compose poetry from now on, listen to the words flowing like a liquid. Don't look at the words like rocks arranged in a row. Think of each line as a piece of melody carrying you down to the next line to the next part of the river flowing inevitably downstream but always with a surprise around the next bend of the line. That's the basic literal meaning of the expression to go with the flow. And when you go with the flow poets, when you compose with your ears and not your eyes, you'll find that word choices will come to you in new and surprising ways because you're on a kayak or a raft being taken downstream on a journey of discovery. Try this and on your next reflection on your next poem. Tell me how it worked out for you and what the experience was like for you. I wish you good composing poets.